KUCHING: Assistant Minister of Education, Science and Technological Research Dr Annuar Rapaee said that he will propose to the Sarawak government on ways to help students especially slow learners struggling with online learning during the Covid-19 pandemic.
He said that home-based teaching and learning (PdPR) sessions were not only affecting students in the rural areas but also students who are slow learners.
“For smart students, you put them anywhere they will still be smart. But for the slow learners, it will be a big problem,” he said in response to a question raised when he was officiating at the closing ceremony of ‘The Voice of the Brains’ youth debate organised by Sarawak Muslim Students Welfare Association (Perkepis) today.
“Two weeks ago, I managed to sit down with the school principals in Sibu and we looked at ways on how to help these students. And I managed to convince the principals in my area (Nangka constituency) to help out,” he said.
The Nangka assemblyman said that once schools are fully safe to reopen, one of the proposed approaches to help the students who are slow learners would be to give them extra time to learn in schools.
“Another catch up after the pandemic is over is that the school said they need a workbook and extra hours, and they agreed to keep the students at least for 45 minutes every day to stay back in school,” he said.
He added the schools in his area had also raised the issue of facing problems in printing out homework and notes, thus he had decided to give them some funds to manage those matters.
“We have to accept the fact that studying online is not efficient at all. The reality is our rural people are not able to cope with this online teaching,” he said.
Dr Annuar also stressed that students in the urban area too were not able to cope because when there are many siblings, they need to share the gadgets among themselves for online classes.
“Recent announcement has been made that (more) schools are allowed to reopen with strict standard operating procedures (SOPs) except for those in Covid-19 high-risk areas.
“This is because we realise that the students are finding it very difficult to cope with the PdPR sessions,” he said.
