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She kept her feelings on the prospect of retaining her education portfolio before the recent Cabinet shuffle locked away in her personal belongings because, for Fayval Williams, the prime minister was free to do anything he wished and shift whomever he wanted.But, even if there were fears that the Member of Parliament for St Andrew Eastern might have been among those moving furniture to other addresses, she believes that her work in just over 15 months before the shuffle was good enough to make a profound statement.There was no need for new teaching at the ministry, though, as Williams, though passing the information baton to the Office of the Prime Minister, held onto education, and still gets the opportunity to mingle with Jamaica's youth as the responsible minister."I felt that during the 15 months that I've been here in the midst of the pandemic that I did my best to ensure that our children still remain learning all during the pandemic, the majority of them, I can't say all of them," the minister said during an interview with the Jamaica Observer last week and, in cricket terms, taking her guard for a longer stay at the education crease."I know that all Jamaicans or most Jamaicans were discussing it [Cabinet shuffle], but I kept a steadfast attention to the work at hand in the Ministry of Education," she said.Describing the last 15 months spent at the ministry as "challenging", mainly due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, Williams said that, despite the setbacks inspired by the life-changing intervention, much had been achieved in her first term as minister.She reflected on the gains made in learning, despite connectivity challenges and availability of devices for students, but remains optimistic that programmes now on the table will result in tangible rewards for education stakeholders in coming months."On coming to the Ministry of Education, Youth and Information in September of 2020, obviously we were in the throes of the pandemic and so, for me, the first priority was to see how we could still keep our children learning during the pandemic."There was no face-to-face school when I started, so we had to look at the virtual world. When I did a survey, I called the team together and said, 'what do we have, how can we launch the virtual platform?'"We were able to, in short order, launch the Google platform for students and teachers to meet. You would've seen as well the many efforts, the many initiatives that we launched with regards to getting a device into the hands of students."The survey that was done looking at the number of devices in the education system tallied something like 28,000. We have 600,000 students, so right away we launched the procurement efforts of the Government."The priority for Government procurement of devices was on PATH [Programme of Advancement Through Health and Education] students. But we know as well that there are parents who are needy. They're not on PATH but they need the help in terms of their children getting the devices and so we launched the One Laptop or Tablet Per Child initiative, which was a broad appeal to corporate Jamaica, to our Diaspora, to individuals, to our international partners, to come on board and help us," the education and youth minister said.The ministry, she said, had as its objective to have in hand 100,000 devices through the various avenues stated. Up to this point, she said, nearly 30,000 have been acquired for those in need, and the efforts at having more in place were moving progressively."Additionally," Williams went on, "a third programme we launched was called the Own Your Own Device. It's for those families who are not on PATH, but they need some help".Under that, the Government provided vouchers valued at $20,000 each to 36,000 families, following an online application, and provision of the items through approved vendors and clearance by E-Learning."We worked with eGov Jamaica Ltd to create the platform where the applications could be made, they could be verified and was taken through the whole process. When you walk into a vendor with your electronic voucher, you could walk out with a device of your choice," she added.The problems associated with connectivity, though, were of paramount concern, although Williams said that ways of getting around that were tried."Well, we all know that, across Jamaica, we just don't have the kind of connectivity that we desire. The telecoms industry is primarily a private sector-led industry and we had to depend on them for connectivity. But there are two things that we did. For those schools that were in rural parts of Jamaica, we connected them, we found a provider that had satellite equipment and connectivity and we ensured that about 104 schools were connected via satellite."So what that meant was the teachers who were in rural Jamaica, if they did not have connectivity at their homes, they could come to the school and connect with students from there."Another effort was the significant spending that the ministry did to pay for the connectivity for teachers and some students. The providers would bill us instead of billing the individuals. So we were able to cover the cost of some of the expenses associated with the connectivity. That situation now made us realise that we needed to have better connectivity in our schools."Subsequent to that, an inter-ministerial task force was formed, which involves the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Science, Energy and Technology, and the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation to see how broadband connectivity for all schools could be improved."We looked at all our schools, we defined for the schools the level of broadband connectivity that the schools should have based on the enrollment of the school," Williams went on. "We mapped all the schools across Jamaica to see where they're located relative to the Government's fibre backbone."Then we looked at schools that are at a further distance away but could be served by the existing providers, and then the third tier of schools are those that are not near the Government's infrastructure, they're not within the footprint of the providers, those are remote, and that's where the satellite connectivity will continue to be."So far, we're at the point where we have begun to onboard our large high schools in particular, especially those in the Corporate Area."Additionally, we would've done a survey of all our schools with regards to the equipment that they have on the school compound to be able to accept the Internet and, of course, as we expected, they all need to be upgraded and so we started that procurement process."We want Wi-Fi to be at all our schools, and so that's another procurement process to ensure that not only do we deliver the broadband to the schools, but they have the equipment that can manage it."As for the target date for that project, Williams told the Sunday Observer that global supply chain issues had served to stutter the initiative."We were very aggressive, initially, in terms of our target date, but we got caught with the global supply chain because all the equipment has to be brought from overseas and there's just shortages all around."We're hoping, by the end of this school year, that we will at least make a significant dent in terms of the schools that have been brought on because we're far along in terms of the procurement effort," the minister stated.As for the estimated 55,000 students that it is estimated dropped out of the school system during the last year to pursue other options, Williams declined to blame connectivity issues associated with suppliers for the situation.She reckoned that a low percentage of the dropouts had done so because of poor connectivity."Remember that the online platform is not the only platform that we have. We've also been broadcasting lessons on television, we have lessons on radio as well, we put out the timetable, and if none of that works, then you have your text books, your worksheets, and the teacher to be in touch."So I think it's primarily those who have not been online. There is no indication that they're listening to the radio lessons or on television. They've not been in touch with the school, [although] the teacher might've reached out to the parents. So when you talk about the students that they are not finding, I think those are the type of students," the minister stated.