SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly has giv­en the as­sur­ance that of­fi­cials from her min­istry will reach out to fam­i­ly mem­bers of 14-year-old school dropout Re­hana Badaloo (name changed to pro­tect her iden­ti­ty) to get her back in­to the class­room.

Re­hana’s plight, which was high­light­ed on the front page of the Sun­day Guardian last week head­lined ‘I want to go back to school’, touched the hearts of our read­ers.

The ar­ti­cle cit­ed pover­ty and un­em­ploy­ment as promi­nent fea­tures among fam­i­lies whose chil­dren have ei­ther dropped out of school or were fre­quent­ly ab­sent from class­es.

It al­so spoke about Ke­ston Bruce, 16,  a Form Four Stu­dent of Va­len­cia High School, and 14-year-old Holy Cross Col­lege stu­dent Sean Dood­nath not at­tend­ing school reg­u­lar­ly due to their moth­ers’ dry pock­ets and con­tin­u­ous strug­gles.

Re­hana is one of 2,800 pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary stu­dents who dropped out of school be­tween 2020 and 2022.

This fig­ure was pro­vid­ed by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion fol­low­ing a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion re­quest made ear­li­er this year by this news­pa­per.

The teenag­er was forced to drop out of Form One class at Biche High School af­ter pass­ing the 2022 Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment ex­am­i­na­tion due to her grand­moth­er Dana Badaloo’s fi­nan­cial con­straints.

It would have cost Badaloo $2,000 a month in trans­port to send Re­hana to her new school.

Badaloo,68, sur­vives on a month­ly $3,500 pen­sion while Re­hana’s 43-year-old fa­ther is not gain­ful­ly em­ployed.

The pen­sion­er had to painful­ly choose sur­vival over her grand­daugh­ter’s ed­u­ca­tion.

Bal­doo ad­mit­ted that mak­ing that de­ci­sion ripped her apart.

The grand­moth­er said she had asked that Re­hana be trans­ferred to Man­zanil­la Sec­ondary School which is clos­er to their Mar­quis Road, Plum Mi­tan home but got no feed­back.

“It is usu­al that the school con­tacts the par­ents of ab­sent stu­dents. But out­dat­ed or in­cor­rect con­tact in­for­ma­tion and ad­dress­es of­ten stymie this. Ef­forts will be made to con­tact the par­ents again, and if un­suc­cess­ful, the last known ad­dress­es will be passed to T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, who, for years have been as­sist­ing the Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices in lo­cat­ing par­ents so that the fam­i­ly can be sup­port­ed in con­tin­u­ing the child’s ed­u­ca­tion, of­ten with the in­put of the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment,” Gads­by-Dol­ly told the Sun­day Guardian in a text mes­sage on Wednes­day.

Help for oth­er stu­dents from So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­istry

In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view on Thurs­day, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Min­is­ter Don­na Cox al­so pledged to help the three fam­i­lies.

"Our peo­ple at the min­istry have al­ready made con­tact with the fam­i­lies. Fam­i­ly Ser­vices is sup­posed to see how we can help them. I know they are putting to­geth­er a team to as­sist. I will speak with ed­u­ca­tion (min­istry) be­cause we want to be clear about the rea­sons why these chil­dren are not in school. If it is that they lack...then we will help them."