Abstract:

The Covid-19 pandemic had an astonishing impact on global education and mental health services. It presented many educational, psychosocial, and spiritual challenges leading to many children, teachers, and parents experiencing mental health difficulties. To curtail the spread of the virus many countries across the globe instituted policies intended to control the spread of the disease, but the pandemic presented a major challenge, especially to education, an engine for growth and national development. Governing bodies made the decision to restrict face-to-face educational services so as to limit the spread of the virus. This culminated in widespread closure of primary and secondary schools and other educational institutions in many countries. Some researchers have found that when there is parental involvement with adolescents in Caribbean countries, there is a lower risk for mental health issues such as loneliness, anxiety, and suicidal ideation. Other researchers reported that a major determinant of adolescents’ and children’s mental health in the Caribbean is family and school connectedness. It was also found that most secondary school students in Antigua & Barbuda were either not coping well or simply coping with the Covid-19 pandemic.

This study is significant as it furthers the research on Covid-19’s impact by addressing the Caribbean island nation of Antigua and Barbuda’s primary and secondary school students’ mental health and education through parents’ and teachers’ perceptions on a 22 item survey administered during the Covid-19 pandemic. The survey is inclusive of six demographic items. The other 16 items were primarily related to students’ mental health, learning, and learning supports as well as students and teachers access to and use and assessment of communication and electronic technologies and other resources used to ease and the transition to and facilitate online teaching and learning with the associated complexities and economic disparities. Eight of these 16 survey items pertained to students, three pertained to teachers, three pertained to students and teachers, one pertained to parents and teachers, and one pertained to parents. The key findings included over 60% of students showed evidence of each of the following: “reduced motivation and procrastination”, “concerns about academic progress/career goals”, “reduced personal interactions”, “lack of motivation”, “difficulty with concentration”, “difficulty completing the same amount of course work”. Parents and teachers generally gave similar responses to the individual survey items. The survey respondents overwhelmingly thought that students learned less during the Covid-19 lock-down and they anticipated decreased student performance on the Caribbean Examination Council’s Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate exit examination. Overall, this study revealed that the transition from face-to-face to online teaching and learning during the Covid-19 pandemic was fraught with complexities in access and use of online educational technology and resources, availability of parental and teacher educational support of students, apparent lack of students’ motivation to learn, and disparities in economic resources.

Keywords:

Covid-19 Pandemic, Antigua & Barbuda, Mental Health, Online Learning.