SHALIZA HASSANALI
Poverty and unemployment feature prominently among families whose children have dropped out of the school system.
Of the three families interviewed last week, the Sunday Guardian discovered that the children were forced to leave school or be absent frequently due to the parents/guardians not having jobs, food, or money to send them to classes to achieve an education.
Other issues that could lead a child to quit school include bullying, lack of interest, excess academic pressure, constant failure, pregnancy, delinquency, education not considered a necessity, anxiety, stress, and schools located too far from home.
Last week, the Sunday Guardian in an exclusive article disclosed that 2,800 children from primary and secondary schools had dropped out of the school system between 2020 and 2022. The figures were provided by the Ministry of Education following a Freedom of Information request made earlier this year by the newspaper.
On Tuesday, the Ministry of Education in a press release stated that police officers may soon begin visiting the homes of school dropouts to ensure they return to classes.
The release stated that the National Security Ministry was working with the Student Support Services Division (SSSD) to deal with truancy.
The process involves teachers and the SSSD reaching out to parents.
“If this fails, police will locate the families and return the students to school,” the release stated.
Last July, the ministry said that data over the past ten to 15 years showed an average of 47 per cent of students leave school annually without achieving certification in at least five CSEC subjects, including Maths and English which limits students’ ability to advance to tertiary education and find jobs above the minimum wage.
(The names of the children and the adults interviewed were changed to protect their identities.)
Rehana Badaloo, 14, has been begging to return to school.
“Most times I feel depressed and bored. I miss school. I know it’s hard on Grandma to do everything. If she had the money, I know I would have been in class getting an education,” the schoolgirl said, saddened by her situation.
Rehana has been forced to drop out of school due to her grandmother’s financial constraints, the family’s impoverishment and her father’s joblessness. Her grandmother Dana Badaloo, 68, has been a struggling pensioner for the past three years, while her father, Vikash Badaloo, 46, is not gainfully employed.
Badaloo admitted that it grieves her heart when her granddaughter constantly begs them to return to school.
“Every day that child does ask me when she would go to school and that is something I cannot answer. It does grieve my heart,” Badaloo said on Tuesday at her Plum Mitan home.
Rehana is one of 2,814 students who dropped out of school between the start of 2020 and the end of 2022. Approximately 151 pupils in government primary schools and 2,663 secondary school students quit classes during this period.
Teachers and education stakeholders said the COVID-19 pandemic significantly increased the number of students dropping out.
Badaloo, however, did not attribute the pandemic to Rehana being denied an education. She said a cycle of poverty, financial woes and unemployment were the main reasons.
Six weeks before Rehana wrote the Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) examination, her 30-year-old mother, Ria Tom, a market vendor, died of a massive heart attack.
At the time of the death, Rehana was already living with her grandmother and father.
“Rehana came to live with me when she was one year old. I took her under my wing. With her mother gone, I had to fully provide for her,” Badaloo said.
The teenager put her best foot forward in the SEA exam and passed.
“The family was overjoyed. I could not have been happier,” Badaloo said, remembering that proud moment.
Knowing she could not have afforded Rehana’s school books, uniform, and shoes, Badaloo turned to Manzanilla/Fishing Pond councillor Kerwyn Phillip for help.
Phillip approached business owners in Sangre Grande who donated $3,000 for Rehana’s school supplies.
But what Badaloo did not cater for was the daily $100 transport fees to send Rehana to and from her new school.
To fork out the money would have caused Badaloo to hang her hat where she could not reach.
Badaloo collects a monthly pension of $3,500.
“If I pay the $2,000 to send Rehana to school all I would have been left with is $1,500 to buy food, pay my bills, and buy my medication which would not have been enough. I would have ended up in problems.”
With rising food inflation, Badaloo said she had to choose survival over Rehana’s education.
“It was a tough decision, a painful one. I wanted to send my granddaughter to school but I couldn’t do it, given our challenges.”
Badaloo said keeping her granddaughter at home worries her.
She asked the school if Rehana could be transferred to Manzanilla Secondary School which is closer to their home to reduce her expense but never got a response.
“The child home doing nothing for eight months. She could have been in the Manzanilla school all these months. She home for so long and no one from the school or Education Ministry has visited us to enquire why she dropped out of the school.”
Badaloo said she ensured her ten children were given an education despite their hardships.
She wants the same for Rehana but feels hopeless.
“Children who inherit challenges become trapped in a cycle of poverty with little or no opportunities to build a better life,” the pensioner pointed out.
The small wooden house in which the Badaloos live is falling apart and termite ridden.
“The house is rotten and I don’t even have money to fix it,” Badaloo added.
Rehana said her father tries to contribute to the household but jobs have been slow.
“Dad went out the road this morning to hustle,” Rehana said when asked if her father helps out.
“It has been hard,” the teenager said.
Cuddling four puppies on a makeshift bench, Rehana said her only wish is for their lives to improve and to go back to school.
Keston Bruce looks on as his mother, Rose Thomas, makes a vase at the family’s Sangre Grande home on Tuesday.
ABRAHAM DIAZ
‘Keston slipping through the cracks’
Unemployed Rose Thomas knows her son is falling through the cracks because poverty and mounting pressure are making it difficult for him to get an education.
Thomas has been pushing for her 16-year-old son, Keston Bruce, a student at a high school in the East, to get an education.
But not being able to provide for her son’s needs is causing major setbacks for the teenager.
Thomas is from Sangre Grande, which is one of 47 areas identified by the ministry as having school dropouts.
The mother admitted that her life started to go downhill last year after she lost her taxi job.
“I started using my savings to send Keston to school.”
Thomas paid $200 a week in transport for Keston until her bank account ran dry.
Then she began selling items in her home to pay the transport cost.
Advertising the items for sale also put Thomas at risk when two gunmen entered her home days before Christmas last year and carted away a chainsaw, weedwacker, tablet and cell phone valued at $8,000.
“It was really terrifying,” she recalled.
The robbery left her broke and Keston was unable to attend school regularly which was reflected in his end-of-term report card.
Out of an overall mark of 600, Keston attained a mere 29 score in his six Caribbean Secondary Education (CSEC) subjects.
In his English, Maths and biology tests, Keston obtained 14, ten and five per cent respectively.
He was absent for information technology, literature and office administration.
Overall, Keston received a five per cent mark which earned him an “F” grade.
The general comments from Keston’s teachers were “Good student but absent too often. Never attended classes. Needs to attend school regularly. Absent too often. High absenteeism.”
Keston’s form teacher wrote that he was “absent too often, needs to settle down and do revision.”
Next year, Keston will write the CSEC exams, but Thomas knows he is incapable of passing any of his subjects based on his poor grades.
Thomas said her son does not have any textbooks.
“I know he is slipping through the cracks... he is getting from bad to worse with his school work. As a mother, it bothers me not being able to help him because of the situation we are in.”
Thomas said Keston’s father does not maintain him.
Having notified the school of her plight, Thomas, a single parent, said she was advised to sign up for a social grant with the Ministry of Social Development and Family Services.
“I applied for help but never received a response.”
Keston said he feels uncomfortable in school because his classmates ridicule him.
“They make fun of me because I am always by myself. I don’t have any friends. Since COVID I have not been coping well with my school work. My grades have fallen terribly,” Keston said.
Thomas relies on a church for food supplies.
“They have not delivered any hampers in weeks. You know what it is to get up in the morning and have nothing to eat? Many nights I go to sleep crying when I think how we are suffering.”
In the squatting community in which they live, there is no electricity, paved roads and pipe-borne water.
Keston studies at night using a lamp or flambeau.
“This is the worst time of my life. I have already lived my life but it seems there is no hope for my son who deserves far better.”
Sean Doodnath
Hampers and handouts–Mom struggling to send 4 sons to school
Deciding which of her four sons to send to school has become a daily task for jobless Nadine Doodnath.
Most times, Doodnath, 35, would select her 14-year-old son, Sean, a student of Holy Cross College, over his three siblings because of his exceptional academic performance.
She knows all her boys should be in school, but Doobal said without a steady job, she has to make sacrifices.
It costs Doobal, $1,000 a month to send Sean from his Manzanilla home to his Arima school.
The single parent also spends a monthly $1,000 on transport for her three other sons–two are students of Sangre Grande Secondary, Manzanilla High, while one is a pupil of Manzanilla Nariva Government Primary School.
“A lot of times it’s strenuous. Sometimes money would run short and I would not be able to send them boys to school.”
Most times, Doodnath’s 12-year-old son who attends Sangre Grande Secondary would have to stay home.
Before the pandemic, Doodnath said, she provided for all her children.
“I had a permanent job with the Sangre Grande Hospital as a security officer. But when the Government closed the schools, I had to give up my work to help the children with online learning. From that period to now is hampers and handouts we living on.”
She said only one of the fathers assisted but not in a significant way.
Doobal sometimes sells fish along the breezy Manzanilla seafront to make ends meet.
Her mother and sister would also chip in since they believe in education.
“Something has to happen because I don’t want them to stay at home. Their education is the only thing to bail them out of this hard life.”
Doobal said she has been pushing Sean because of his natural ability to learn.
“I think Shaqueal is a genius. He is gifted,” Doobal said, giving her reasons for ensuring he goes to school regularly.
“It ain’t make sense that Sean have all this brain and it going to waste. He done come from a poor family already and for him to waste that, it ain’t making sense. His teachers and them does real push him. When I see how his teachers are proud of my son, I does feel really proud too. I just want him to excel…to do good.”
Doobal said Shaqueal wanted to attend Queen’s Royal College but because of the distance, he chose a school closer as his first choice.
“Sean started talking at five years. I thought he would have been a slow learner.”
Turns out, Sean is a natural in information technology and sciences.
He is also a whiz in maths.
Last year Sean was one of 50 students in his school who participated in an international Mathematics Olympiad test.
The examination was sent to Australia to be graded and Sean was one of six students successful in the first round.
If Sean advances, he would be put on a local team to represent T&T in an international competition.
Sean is ranked among the top five students in his class despite his struggles.
“My chemistry teacher told my mother if I work a little harder, I could get a scholarship,” he said in a telephone interview.
Sean admitted to feeling guilty when his younger brother has to stay home.
“I think we both should be given an education. Yes, I do worry and feel guilty about it. Sometimes I do regret picking the school that I attend because of how far and expensive it is to travel. I do wonder how it would have been if I had just attended a school in my district and helped save the $1,000 my mother spends each month on transport. I think about how many things that $1,000 could have bought, such as food for the family.”
Doodnath said she applied for public assistance and a food card months ago but is still awaiting a response.
Dr Tim Gopeesingh.
Abraham-Diaz
Ministry needs to do careful analysis–Gopeesingh
Former education minister Dr Tim Gopeesingh said the failure and deterioration of the education system have led to the dropouts.
“It’s really a situation where the education of the children is at a terrible stage.”
Gopeesingh said the ministry needs to do a careful analysis, utilising its school supervisors, the Student Support Services Division and principals to determine where these school dropouts are, what they are doing and what caused them to drop out.
The ministry should also supply data on how many students left the school system during the first, second and third year of the pandemic.
“This requires urgent intervention to prevent the catastrophe in our education system which is unacceptable at the moment.”
He said there are major gaps in the ministry’s management that are causing the school dropouts.
4 suggestions to deal with school dropouts
1) Provide more Students Support Services Division workers.
2) Ensure that School Supervisors 1, 2, and 3 do their work.
3) School boards should play a greater role with communities to find out which child has been staying away from classes.
4) Ministry of Social Development has to help unemployed and struggling parents/guardians with financial assistance.
