An­na-Lisa Paul

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2,000 school stu­dents ap­pear to have dropped out of the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem since T&T’s COVID-19 pan­dem­ic bat­tle be­gan in March 2020.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said the group com­prised both pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school stu­dents.

She said fig­ures from the School Su­per­vi­sion Di­vi­sion for pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school stu­dents, whom they have not been able to make con­tact with, stood at around 2,000.

Of this num­ber, she said peo­ple may have al­ready ex­ist­ed on the school reg­is­ter be­fore, while oth­ers may be new.

There are ap­prox­i­mate­ly 225,000 stu­dents en­rolled in pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools across T&T.

In an ef­fort to cur­tail this grow­ing trend, Gads­by-Dol­ly said the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion (MOE) is now re­ly­ing on the com­mu­ni­ty po­lice to help track down the par­ents of the chil­dren who have stopped at­tend­ing class­es.

She said she has spo­ken to the Po­lice Ser­vice, Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and the Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion (SSSD) on this mat­ter be­fore.

“In the cir­cum­stances, the SSSD of­fi­cers may find it dif­fi­cult to con­duct home vis­its but we do need to lo­cate the stu­dents who are not ap­pear­ing on­line or col­lect­ing pack­ages, so we have de­vel­oped a pro­to­col and now re­fin­ing it where we can have the for­mal in­ter­ven­tion of the com­mu­ni­ty po­lice but not to lock up par­ents,” she told Guardian Me­dia in an on­line in­ter­view.

Con­tact­ed on the stu­dent drop-out sta­tis­tics last evening, the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) said they could not ver­i­fy the claims.

Na­tion­al Coun­cil of the Par­ent-Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (NCP­TA) PRO Shami­la Ra­heem had pre­vi­ous­ly de­scribed it as a “very re­al prob­lem” which ex­ist­ed even be­fore COVID.

Claim­ing it had be­come more preva­lent now as fam­i­lies con­tin­ue to en­counter eco­nom­ic fall-out, she said, “More help and as­sis­tance from the State for these fam­i­lies can go a long way to help get­ting some of these stu­dents back in school. Some of them have left to help bring in mon­ey to care for their fam­i­lies so they are not on­line, while some oth­ers have no su­per­vi­sion to en­sure they stay on­line as sin­gle par­ents go to work.”

Com­mend­ing the SSSD for help­ing stu­dents to nav­i­gate this trau­mat­ic pe­ri­od, even in the face of be­ing un­der­staffed, the Gads­by-Dol­ly said ef­forts have been made to bring on short term work­ers, as the de­mand for their par­tic­u­lar range of ser­vices is grow­ing.

She ac­knowl­edged this sys­tem had made it eas­i­er for stu­dents to fall be­hind, as she claimed var­i­ous is­sues were now oc­cur­ring since the pan­dem­ic forced the move to on­line learn­ing.

Ques­tioned about teacher ab­sen­teeism, Gads­by-Dol­ly said based on week­ly quan­ti­ta­tive re­ports com­piled by the dis­trict school su­per­vi­sors, more than 90 per cent of teach­ers are out gen­er­al­ly and work­ing in dif­fer­ent ways.

Pro­vid­ing an up­date on the lap­top dis­tri­b­u­tion pro­gramme, the min­is­ter said 22,000 de­vices were do­nat­ed via the Adopt-A-School ini­tia­tive, while 20,000 more were on gov­ern­ment or­der from the US and should ar­rive in the coun­try by mid-June.

Mean­while, an as­sess­ment of the 22,000 ap­pli­ca­tions that were re­ceived from peo­ple via the means test is cur­rent­ly un­der­way.

Adding that the lap­top dis­tri­b­u­tion was on­ly one part of the trans­for­ma­tion process, she said oth­er crit­i­cal ar­eas in­clud­ed the in­tro­duc­tion and use of E-books, the de­vel­op­ment and up­grade of the School Learn­ing Man­age­ment Sys­tem and the on­line man­age­ment of in­for­ma­tion such as record keep­ing.