Clinical traumatologist Hanif Benjamin wants the Ministry of Education to start Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) in Form One from as early as the upcoming school year.
“We need to develop young people holistically,” he said yesterday in response to a Sunday Guardian article that revealed 2,814 students had dropped out of school between 2020 and 2022.
The article revealed that 151 primary pupils and 2,663 secondary school students dropped out during that period.
One of those children was a Standard Two girl from a school in Diego Martin. Her teacher, who asked to remain anonymous, yesterday said the child was academically weak and repeated Standard Two twice. He said when online classes started, her parent got her a device but they did not know how to operate it. He said he showed them what to do on his time off but the girl never attended class.
Speaking on CNC3’s Morning Brew yesterday, Benjamin said there was a high level of frustration among students like the one from Diego Martin.
“We have to understand that not everybody can swim, not everybody can climb a tree but everybody can run…from the time I reach Form Two and I realised I struggling, I ain’t coming back because I doh (sic) want to be embarrassed by calling me to read, I cyar read, or to do no sum on no board,” he said.
Benjamin said he is often told by weak students that they are waiting for Form Four to get access to TVET.
“We could be creating skilled people. You know how much it cost to build a kitchen in your house right?” he asked.
He said many people in T&T have a myopic way of thinking and it’s only the children who will suffer.
He added that a lot of children drop out of Forms Two, Three and Four when they realise they can’t get the subject they have.
“If you really want change, you have to bring it from the school system from day one, from early,” he said.
Apart from the learning challenges, Benjamin said many children drop out because of economic, mental and family challenges.
He said issues occurred before the pandemic but were definitely multiplied after it hit, especially with the lack of access to devices and the internet.
“Because of that, a lot of children disengage from the school system. Right in my village, it seems like most of the young people dropped out of school and when you look at the reasons, mommy, or daddy, and grandma, cannot afford to send a child to a free school,” he said.
He said a lot of our children leave school to work or participate in illegal activities.
“There are no alternatives, it’s either this or nothing,” he explained.
Benjamin said the term “the buck stops with the parent” is an old adage and in some families, their economic situation is difficult and we must go further than providing box lunches for them.
“The ball is being dropped when it comes to our children constantly in Trinidad and Tobago and that is vexing,” he said.
Benjamin questioned the ministry’s plans to reintegrate the 2,800-plus students who left school, a figure he believes is much higher, adding the responsibility cannot be put solely on the teachers.
“We have to ask ourselves whether the Student Support Services understand the social challenges that are going on, whether they have the remit to go to the homes to figure out what’s going on,” he said.
Guardian Media yesterday sent questions to the Ministry of Education which were acknowledged, but no response was given up to press time.
Questions were also sent to the T&T Police Service about parents who keep their children away from school, which is illegal. There was also no response.
Meanwhile, United National Congress shadow minister for education Anita Haynes said the ministry has failed vulnerable students.
In a press release, Haynes said the school dropout rate, which increased significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic, was foreseeable and could have been mitigated. She said the absence of executive policies to frontally treat this matter is a poor reflection on the Government and maintains there is a great cause for concern when considering the future ramifications of the rate of school dropouts.
