Joshua Seemu­n­gal

and Carisa Lee

At least 151 pri­ma­ry school pupils dropped out of gov­ern­ment schools in Trinidad be­tween the be­gin­ning of 2020 and the end of 2022, while an­oth­er 2,663 stu­dents dropped out of gov­ern­ment sec­ondary schools dur­ing the same pe­ri­od–a fig­ure of 2,814.

The Sun­day Guardian ob­tained the in­for­ma­tion from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion af­ter sub­mit­ting a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion re­quest ear­li­er this year.

Ac­cord­ing to sev­er­al school dropouts and teach­ers, as well as ed­u­ca­tion stake­hold­ers, the pan­dem­ic sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­creased the num­ber of stu­dents who left school.

Many of the stu­dents felt as though they had no choice but to drop out. Those who have fall­en through the cracks men­tioned feel­ing im­mense pres­sure to as­sist their fam­i­lies make ends meet at home as the pan­dem­ic wors­ened things for them.

Many of them said they work odd jobs like con­struc­tion or sell­ing small items. Oth­ers, mean­while, said they spend a lot of their time help­ing at home with their sib­lings. It was un­cer­tain what many oth­ers have been do­ing, how­ev­er some chil­dren who drop out of school have found them­selves on the wrong side of the law, dab­bling in guns and drugs and get­ting draft­ed in­to gangs.

Teach­ers and ed­u­ca­tion stake­hold­ers said that the sit­u­a­tion was con­cern­ing, with more and more stu­dents falling through the cracks.

“I know of a child from my school who dropped out of school dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. Her sit­u­a­tion was eco­nom­ic in that she nev­er came on­line for class­es dur­ing the lock­down. She was aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly weak and re­peat­ing Stan­dard Two. Ef­forts to get her to come to school were fu­tile,” a teacher at a Diego Mar­tin pri­ma­ry school said.

“Put your­selves in the shoes of a child who passed through that sit­u­a­tion. You come out of school to­tal­ly lost. You were weak be­fore, and now, you are to­tal­ly lost. What do you think the po­ten­tial for dropout would be? Not high?”

Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic some par­ents lost their jobs, so they do not have the means to take care of their chil­dren and pro­vide for them to come to school, said Shi­razudeen Mo­hammed, who re­tired as a Suc­cess Laven­tille teacher in 2022.

“What hap­pens then? Be­cause dur­ing the pan­dem­ic many of us, as teach­ers, would have put up mon­ey to get ham­pers to give to par­ents who we know are strug­gling. It’s no­body’s fault per se, but when the min­istry talks, it’s as though they did every­thing pos­si­ble, but you and I know that’s not the case.”

A look at the num­bers

*A clos­er look at the gov­ern­ment pri­ma­ry schools showed that 24 stu­dents dropped out in 2020; 36 stu­dents dropped out in 2021, and 91 stu­dents dropped out in 2022.

*The ed­u­ca­tion dis­trict with the most gov­ern­ment pri­ma­ry school dropouts since 2020 was Port-of-Spain and en­vi­rons with 49.

*The St George East dis­trict, which in­cludes schools in Tu­na­puna, Arou­ca, Curepe, El Do­ra­do, Mor­vant, St Au­gus­tine, St Joseph, San Juan, Mt Hope and Curepe, had 38 dropouts.

*The Vic­to­ria dis­trict, which in­cludes schools in San Fer­nan­do, Debe, La Ro­main, Gas­par­il­lo, Clax­ton Bay, Mara­bel­la and Pleas­antville, had 20 dropouts.

*The Ca­roni dis­trict, which in­cludes schools in Char­lieville, Barataria, Cara­pichaima, Ch­agua­nas, Cou­va, Cunu­pia, Ca­roni and Preysal, had 18 dropouts.

*The St Patrick dis­trict, which in­cludes schools in Fyz­abad, Ce­dros, Pe­nal, Point Fortin, Siparia and La Brea, had 14 dropouts.

*The South East­ern dis­trict, which in­cludes schools in Ma­yaro, Bar­rack­pore, Rio Claro, Princes Town, Tabaquite and Ku­mar Vil­lage, had eight dropouts.

*The North East­ern dis­trict, which in­cludes Ari­ma, Biche, Brazil, Cu­mo­to, Matelot, Man­zanil­la, San­gre Grande, Matu­ra Vil­lage, Va­len­cia and To­co, had the least record­ed pri­ma­ry school dropouts with four.

Mean­while, in the coun­try’s gov­ern­ment sec­ondary schools, 623 stu­dents dropped out in 2020; 1,056 stu­dents dropped out in 2021; while 984 stu­dents dropped out in 2022.

*The dis­trict with the most sec­ondary school dropouts was St George East with 724 stu­dents. In 2021 alone, 302 stu­dents dropped out of sec­ondary schools in the dis­trict.

*North East­ern was the dis­trict with the least dropouts–281 stu­dents.

*The Port-of-Spain and en­vi­rons dis­trict record­ed 423 dropouts, the sec­ond-high­est to­tal.

Chil­dren tell their sto­ries

Over the past week, the Sun­day Guardian at­tempt­ed to track down some of the pri­ma­ry school stu­dents who dropped out dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

It proved dif­fi­cult in Port-of-Spain, Las Cuevas and Diego Mar­tin. Res­i­dents there said many chil­dren dropped out, but they were un­able to con­nect us with the for­mer stu­dents.

Ma­yaro was dif­fer­ent.

A young­ster, now 13, said, “I dropped out of school at the age of ten. The rea­son for drop­ping out was that I had oth­er sib­lings and my mom was a sin­gle par­ent. I helped out by tak­ing care of younger broth­ers and sis­ters, see­ing how hard mom worked to man­age us, and then it was dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

“Mon­ey was re­al hard com­ing in. Mom­my used to be com­plain­ing about how hard it was. And some­times we didn’t even have food to car­ry to school. We had to de­pend on the box lunch in the school, and some­times we had to walk to school be­cause we didn’t even have the mon­ey for a taxi to school.

“My mom was a bit sad when I dropped out, know­ing she couldn’t take care of all of us and send us all to school at the same time. I didn’t get to write SEA be­cause of that. Miss used to be send­ing mes­sages, some­times she would come and look for us, and she would try to as­sist in get­ting me back in­to school.

“I would re­al­ly love to go back to school and hope things will be bet­ter off with us. I be­lieve get­ting a job with­out ed­u­ca­tion is one of the most dif­fi­cult things in this world. So yes, I would love very much to go back to school and try again be­cause it’s not like I don’t like school. I miss school, and if we could get a lit­tle as­sis­tance that would be nice to help mom­my more, so we could take our ed­u­ca­tion as we are sup­posed to.”

An­oth­er mi­nor from Ma­yaro, who dropped out of school, al­so felt as though he did not have a choice. He too would like to go back to the class­room.

“I dropped out of school around the age of 13. I was in Form Three, right? The rea­son I dropped out of school is that when I was go­ing to school, my mom was sin­gle, and it was five of us, so it was re­al­ly a bat­tle. So she could not take care of all of us and send us to school and mentee us. She wasn’t work­ing any­way so it was hard for her,” Al­lan said.

“I was go­ing to school us­ing trans­porta­tion and then the fi­nan­cial prob­lems, go­ing to school every day was a re­al is­sue. So it was just more con­ve­nient for her, I guess, for me to stay home.”

Re­tired teacher weighs in

In 1986, Shi­razudeen Mo­hammed, fresh out of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies as a qual­i­fied teacher, was as­signed to Suc­cess Laven­tille as a math­e­mat­ics teacher.

Mo­hammed spent his en­tire teach­ing ca­reer at the East Port-of-Spain school, be­fore re­tir­ing in 2022.

And while he saw many things, good and bad, over his three decades at Suc­cess Laven­tille, the chal­lenges posed for stu­dents by the pan­dem­ic were the most dif­fi­cult.

The dif­fi­cul­ties, he said, pushed many stu­dents to the lim­it, re­sult­ing in some opt­ing to drop out of school.

“The lack of con­nec­tiv­i­ty. No de­vices. Par­ents were work­ing and they were not aware of what was hap­pen­ing at home, be­cause re­mem­ber every­one was on lock­down. So par­ents are go­ing to work, think­ing the chil­dren are do­ing work at home, but noth­ing is hap­pen­ing.

“Could you imag­ine that process as a child? Some­times they are not even com­ing to class. Luck­i­ly enough, all my stu­dents came to class. That was by the grace of God, maybe I found a way to do things that in­ter­est­ed them. Was it the kind of work that I would have liked them to do? No, be­cause some­times you call the roll and the child does not an­swer. Some­times they are hon­est. They say, ‘Sir, I went to get some­thing to eat. Sir, my moth­er called me.’

“Some­times you hear the par­ent call­ing them. All of this led to frus­tra­tion in a child be­cause they couldn’t meet their friends, so that was an­oth­er lev­el of prob­lems in their minds. A re­al host of is­sues would have caused a dropout,” Mo­hammed said.

An­oth­er ma­jor is­sue con­fronting teach­ers and the school sys­tem is the im­pact of poor par­ent­ing, ac­cord­ing to the for­mer Suc­cess Laven­tille teacher.

He said many times dur­ing his ca­reer he raised con­cerns with par­ents about their chil­dren’s per­for­mances, but some of them do not have the ‘where­with­al’ or ‘tech­ni­cal knowl­edge’ to fol­low through and get the re­quired help.

“Some feel a bit hes­i­tant to ask for help be­cause it’s as though there’s a stig­ma at­tached to their child if they go and ask for help. Some of it is plain neg­li­gence, they say here is what, I pro­vide for you, you have a house, place to live, food to eat and if you don’t do this or that by a cer­tain time pe­ri­od, you are out on your own.

“You have some chil­dren who have no choice but to go and work to make ends meet for the fam­i­ly, and it’s no shame to any fam­i­ly, but it’s just the cir­cum­stances that they are in. When they start to work and get their own mon­ey, you know chil­dren, they feel that is the end all, they are mak­ing mon­ey and they have some change in their pock­ets. They now think that they are big and they don’t want to hear any­thing about stud­ies, so the eas­i­est thing now is to drop out be­cause you are mak­ing a dol­lar. But they don’t look down the road when op­por­tu­ni­ties dry up,” Mo­hammed said.

The re­tiree said see­ing the stu­dents fall through the cracks was frus­trat­ing and sad­den­ing. He said there was a feel­ing of help­less be­cause some­times it is im­pos­si­ble to get through to them or their par­ents.

“You are talk­ing about par­ents you would have liked to meet dur­ing the tenure of a child’s life at school, and some of those chil­dren are un­reach­able. Un­reach­able. For many rea­sons. Ei­ther mes­sage doesn’t go home. Phone num­bers changed and it’s not up­dat­ed in school. No­body saw it fit to up­date. Some­times they change ad­dress­es. Even though at one point in time we were able to get po­lice as­sis­tance.

“I must say the of­fi­cers of the Hearts and Minds project were won­der­ful and car­ing of­fi­cers who worked with us, but some­times you send them to an ad­dress you had on file look­ing for a par­ent, on­ly when they reach there they find out no­body lives there any­more.

“I once asked a par­ent to meet at Mara­cas Beach be­cause one of the rea­sons that par­ent couldn’t come in was be­cause of the turf war. Some­times par­ents are re­luc­tant to come to school. The boy was miss­ing a lot of schools, but I know he was a young man who had a lot of po­ten­tial. This boy was in Form One. He was no longer liv­ing with his moth­er be­cause there were is­sues. Of course, the child was ag­gres­sive be­cause he can’t live with mom­my, he can’t live with dad­dy, and he has to fend for him­self at that age,” he added.

That young man, Mo­hammed said, nev­er re­turned to school.

NPTA ‘con­cerned’

School dropouts are a grow­ing con­cern to the pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Par­ent-Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion Kevin David, who said a lot was go­ing on in the sys­tem right now.

He said they have to analyse the de­tails and prob­a­bly in­clude fur­ther dis­cus­sion with the min­istry to find out whether or not these chil­dren have just fall­en out of the school sys­tem or have tak­en on dif­fer­ent ap­proach­es to be­ing ed­u­cat­ed, like for ex­am­ple, home­school­ing.

“So that is some­thing that we want to look at, es­pe­cial­ly at the pri­ma­ry school lev­el,” he added.

“At the sec­ondary school lev­el, we know that there is a lev­el of dropout. This has been con­firmed with dis­cus­sions with our guid­ance coun­sel­lors and those sorts of sup­port staff with­in the school it­self. That is what we are aware of and are con­cerned with. In terms of how that mat­ter is be­ing re­solved, our un­der­stand­ing is that these guid­ance of­fi­cers go out and look for these stu­dents them­selves with the in­ten­tion of ac­tu­al­ly try­ing to find the is­sues and prob­a­bly bring them back in,” David said.

Ac­cord­ing to David, while there is an ob­vi­ous is­sue, stake­hold­ers are fac­ing dif­fi­cul­ties in reach­ing and con­vinc­ing stu­dents di­rect­ly, or through their par­ents, to re­turn to the sys­tem.

He be­lieves that there is a sig­nif­i­cant lev­el of sup­port with­in the sys­tem.

“The prob­lem is that first­ly, are peo­ple aware of the sup­port? And that is where stake­hold­ers like my­self come in and we pro­vide the nec­es­sary in­for­ma­tion to the par­ents. The sec­ond one is, are peo­ple will­ing to take up our sup­port? And I think that is one of the ma­jor is­sues that we have. Not just that there isn’t any sup­port or in­suf­fi­cient sup­port, but if peo­ple are will­ing to take up that lev­el of sup­port.

“So, for ex­am­ple, we can do a com­par­i­son in times gone by in terms of the lev­el of sup­port in schools. We did not have guid­ance of­fi­cers, guid­ance coun­sel­lors and those oth­er things in schools. But in these times we have these. These peo­ple go out and talk with them. And they are the ones that have a bet­ter idea of what is hap­pen­ing un­der­neath the sur­face with­in the school en­vi­ron­ment it­self. So that sup­port is there, but hon­est­ly a lot of our stu­dents, our par­ents are not think­ing about us­ing that sup­port and those sup­port mech­a­nisms that are in place,” David lament­ed.

No re­sponse from Min­is­ter, TTUTA, As­so­ci­a­tion of Prin­ci­pals

Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion Mar­tin Lum Kin ac­knowl­edged re­ceipt of ques­tions on the is­sue but did not pro­vide any re­spons­es.

Ques­tions were al­so posed to the Pres­i­dent of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Prin­ci­pals of Pub­lic Sec­ondary Schools Shar­lene Hicks-Rae­burn. She al­so ac­knowl­edged re­ceipt but did not re­spond.

Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly was al­so con­tact­ed for com­ment but she did not re­spond.