NASSAU, The Bahamas – Education Minister, the Hon. Jeffrey Lloyd, implored Bahamians to adopt a positive attitude and unite in the cause for students to succeed.

“As this is the time for unity among stakeholders in education and communities at large, I call on my Bahamian brothers and sisters to work collaboratively and optimistically with one common goal – and that is to nurture a citizenry that we can all be proud of,” said Minister Lloyd.

“The Ministry of Education’s (MOE) role is to provide quality education to all students throughout the length and breadth of The Bahamas, and it is the role of every citizen to unite in the cause to make this happen. As I prefaced my presentation, I noted the importance of faith. Faith thrives in positivity, and the end result even after multiple obstacles or failures, will always be success.”

In a Communication to Parliament, Wednesday, October 21, Minister Lloyd presented an update on the start of the 2020/21 school year and the progress of educational instruction nationally, and the status of the MOE’s new Educational Management Information System, (EMIS), inclusive of the Learning Management System (LMS) facilitated by One-on-One, a Jamaican based company and partner of BTC.

He explained that on Tuesday, October 13th, 2020, nearly 47,000 public school students resumed their studies after a long pandemic and summer break, many of whom were unable to access the Ministry’s virtual learning portal on that first day.

“The LMS System had been loaded, tested and re-tested to meet the access demand of 60k students over a 60-minute time period. However, what in fact happened, was that within a ten minute period on Tuesday, the 13th, between 8:39 am and 8:49 am, some 22k Users – educators and students -- hit the access button, overloading the system, resulting in the 8 systems defence mechanism being activated and therefore shutting down.

“Within hours the system was restored, but by that time, most of the students and the teachers had moved to an alternate learning platform – such as Zoom, Edmodo or Microsoft Teams – to continue their instruction.

“By Tuesday evening, the system was pretty much fully operational, but the Ministry decided to shut the system down, expand its capability through Tuesday evening and night, so that it could meet the demand of the 60k Users within a whatever time period….  This was done, and by Wednesday morning, October 14, the system was fully restored.”

Moreover, the Education Minister noted areas that need to be perfected primarily center around logistical issues including having the correct information, and users correctly accessing the system with the right user name and password.

“In many instances, this is not done, either because user names or passwords have changed, or are misspelt or incorrectly entered, resulting in individuals being unable to access the system.

“Additionally, the Ministry seeks to make access to all virtual modalities accessible from one single platform, so that for all users – teachers and students – the learning and instructional process is a seamless and efficient process.”