“A lot of work coming but sometimes I can’t explain it to she and then I have to work and when I come home in the nights I does be too tired. So when the work bank up is hard for she to do it and I don’t know if she getting anything at all. You have the workbook and work coming and coming but no teaching, sometimes I don’t know what to do,” a frustrated mother of four told me recently.
She was referring to her first grader who like many other children did not complete her nursery education before the pandemic came and closed school doors last March. Her introduction to primary education is being done virtually and for this mother, and I am sure many others, it is a struggle. The child has never seen her class teacher nor heard her voice. It is her mother and to a lesser extent her older siblings who have been assisting her navigate primary education, none of them are trained to do so.
