T&T CHAM­BER OF IN­DUS­TRY & COM­MERCE

The T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce shares the con­cern and opin­ion of Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion, Dr Tim Gopeesingh, that it is dis­grace­ful and un­ac­cept­able that ap­prox­i­mate­ly four out of every five stu­dents were ab­sent from schools on Ash Wednes­day and that one out of every five teach­ers was ab­sent. Even if he con­clud­ed this from on­ly sev­en of the nine ed­u­ca­tion­al dis­tricts, ex­clud­ing the south east­ern re­gion and Port-of-Spain, the dis­play of ir­re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is a fur­ther cause for con­cern, bear­ing in mind that he re­port­ed ear­li­er this year that 4,000 sec­ondary school stu­dents had dropped out of the school sys­tem, and 58 teach­ers were be­fore the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion on dis­ci­pli­nary com­plaints. Sure­ly, there must be some link be­tween the lack of parental re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, teacher ab­sen­teeism and the vi­o­lence in and out of schools and even, crime and gangs. Gopeesingh hit the nail on the head when he pon­dered whether one of the rea­sons may be that Car­ni­val-weary par­ents could not find the time to take their chil­dren to school. We re­call, too, that he was al­so de­lib­er­at­ing ear­li­er this year whether or not to make par­ents re­spon­si­ble at law for the deeds of their chil­dren as they im­pact on vi­o­lent be­hav­iour in the ed­u­ca­tion­al en­vi­ron­ment.

The cham­ber be­lieves that the min­is­ter must find a way to com­mu­ni­cate his con­cerns and seek the con­tain­ment of the tru­an­cy by reach­ing the par­ents of such tru­ant chil­dren-per­haps even through their em­ploy­ers-with a mes­sage of re­spon­si­ble par­ent­ing, good ex­am­ple, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and the pru­dent use of re­sources. On the top­ic of stu­dent tru­an­cy, Rous­ton Job, pres­i­dent of the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA), is re­port­ed to have said that "par­ents as­sume that there will be no school and choose not to send their chil­dren and may al­so not want to pay the trans­port mon­ey for the rest of the week...mon­ey which many of them do not have." Job's state­ment bears ex­am­in­ing to un­der­stand the rea­son­ing. Why should par­ents as­sume there is no school and why do they not want to pay trans­port mon­ey for the three days of school? Are they out-of-pock­et af­ter Car­ni­val fes­tiv­i­ties or do they con­sid­er it a waste of mon­ey? Should Gopeesingh dis­cov­er any truth in Job's state­ment is there not some op­por­tu­ni­ty here for the Gov­ern­ment, the Na­tion­al Par­ent Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA), etc, to work to over­come such mis­con­cep­tions?

Just like deal­ing with crime, every­one must know that there will be con­se­quences for tru­an­cy, and fear them. Mod­ern day dis­ci­pline em­pha­sis­es penal­ties and/or de­pri­va­tion. The Gov­ern­ment must not sim­ply fi­nance, but must al­so spread a phi­los­o­phy of a sound, well-round­ed ed­u­ca­tion and reg­u­lar­i­ty in at­ten­dance, in­clud­ing Ash Wednes­day and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. In fact, the whole ques­tion of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty in must be en­cour­aged and re­ward­ed, bring­ing par­ents, teach­ers and stu­dents on board. Is the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem recog­nis­ing and re­ward­ing the mod­el stu­dent and pe­nal­is­ing the delin­quents while en­cour­ag­ing them to adopt more pos­i­tive be­hav­iours? In schools of a by­gone era, reg­u­lar­i­ty and punc­tu­al­i­ty were in­clud­ed week­ly or term re­ports and the award of prizes. What has be­come of this?

Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Mar­garet Samp­son-Browne, who is in charge of Com­mu­ni­ty Re­la­tions and the Com­mu­ni­ty Polic­ing Unit, dis­closed ear­li­er this year com­mence­ment of a six-week pro­gramme tar­get­ing the 4,000 school dropouts and delin­quent stu­dents. It re­quires them to re­port to po­lice sta­tions dressed in full school uni­form, ac­com­pa­nied by a par­ent to en­gage in var­i­ous pro­grammes. Gopeesingh is aware of this and, in or­der to avoid rein­vent­ing the wheel, du­pli­cat­ing scarce and ex­pen­sive re­sources, the pro­gramme could be de­signed to al­so deal with the grow­ing chal­lenge of tru­an­cy. The cham­ber can­not, how­ev­er, ig­nore Sec­tions 77 to 84 of the Ed­u­ca­tion Act, Chap­ter 39:01, ei­ther. Sec­tion 77 im­pos­es a du­ty on each par­ent of "every child of com­pul­so­ry school age to cause him to re­ceive ef­fi­cient full-time ed­u­ca­tion suit­able to his age, abil­i­ty and ap­ti­tude, by reg­u­lar at­ten­dance at school." The law could not be clear­er and the cham­ber em­pha­sis­es the need for the child to "re­ceive ef­fi­cient, full-time ed­u­ca­tion."

The act makes it an of­fence for the par­ent to de­ny the child this, pun­ish­able on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion to a fine of $75 in re­spect of each of­fence and, in the case of a con­tin­u­ing of­fence, a fur­ther fine of $75 for each day dur­ing which the of­fence con­tin­ues af­ter con­vic­tion there­for. Sec­tion 79 pro­vides for the ap­point­ment of school at­ten­dance of­fi­cers for each ed­u­ca­tion dis­trict. They are re­spon­si­ble for the en­force­ment of com­pul­so­ry school at­ten­dance in re­spect of all chil­dren. The of­fi­cer is re­quired by Sec­tion 80:4 to in­quire in­to every case of fail­ure to at­tend school with­in his knowl­edge or, when re­quest­ed, by the su­per­vi­sor who su­per­vis­es the of­fi­cer or prin­ci­pal of a school and shall give writ­ten warn­ing of the con­se­quences of the fail­ure of the par­ent of a child who is not at­tend­ing school as re­quired, and shall af­ter, give writ­ten no­tice to the par­ent to cause the child to at­tend school forth­with.

Sec­tion 82 re­quires every prin­ci­pal to re­port to the of­fi­cer the names, ages and res­i­dences of all pupils of com­pul­so­ry school age who have not at­tend­ed school as re­quired and to fur­nish the of­fi­cer with such oth­er in­for­ma­tion as the lat­ter re­quires for the en­force­ment of com­pul­so­ry school at­ten­dance.

Clear­ly, such of­fi­cers play an im­por­tant role in en­sur­ing at­ten­dance at school, but we won­der if these po­si­tions, which are pro­vid­ed for in the Act, are all filled, and if not, why? Or if they are, are they do­ing what is re­quired?

With re­gard to teacher ab­sen­teeism, if we ac­cept as fact what the min­is­ter in­di­cat­ed in a pre­vi­ous ad­dress-that some teach­ers utilise their 28 days' sick and oc­ca­sion­al leave every year by tak­ing them as half-days for var­i­ous pur­pos­es, when those days are added to the ap­prox­i­mate­ly 13 weeks of va­ca­tion leave, teacher time away from class­es is con­sid­er­ably more than what the av­er­age work­er gets an­nu­al­ly. Per­haps, the time has come to adopt some more cre­ative strate­gies or in­cen­tivise teach­ers for not tak­ing all this leave. The cham­ber ful­ly sup­ports the min­is­ter's ef­forts to work with all stake­hold­ers to suc­cess­ful­ly ad­dress these chal­lenges pre­sent­ed by tru­an­cy and we re­it­er­ate that ad­e­quate re­sources must be pro­vid­ed to en­sure that all the coun­try's laws must be en­forced, in­clud­ing the Ed­u­ca­tion Act.