KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice may soon be­gin vis­it­ing the homes of school dropouts to en­sure they re­turn to class­es.

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion (MoE) gave this as­sur­ance in re­sponse to a Sun­day Guardian re­port that at least 151 pupils in gov­ern­ment pri­ma­ry schools stopped at­tend­ing class­es be­tween the start of 2020 and the end of 2022. Dur­ing the same pe­ri­od, 2,663 stu­dents left gov­ern­ment sec­ondary schools.

School dropouts, teach­ers and ed­u­ca­tion stake­hold­ers said the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­creased the num­ber of stu­dents quit­ting school.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, the MoE said the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty (MNS) was work­ing close­ly with its 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 MoE said it al­so shared in­for­ma­tion on stu­dents who re­peat­ed­ly ex­hib­it­ed school in­dis­ci­pline with the MNS, Min­istry of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice and the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices.

“This is cur­rent­ly the sub­ject of a tar­get­ed task force from the Min­istry of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice. These stu­dents, how­ev­er, re­main a part of the school sys­tem and con­tin­ue to re­ceive the sup­port of the SSSD staff at their schools,” the MoE said.

The strat­e­gy is part of the MoE’s Cab­i­net-ap­proved Frame­work for Re­vised Op­er­a­tions in 26 sec­ondary schools and 80 pri­ma­ry schools an­nounced last Ju­ly 19. The aim is to in­crease stu­dent achieve­ment and eq­ui­ty of ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ty in these schools.

Mea­sures in­clude mak­ing Tech­ni­cal and Vo­ca­tion­al Ed­u­ca­tion and Train­ing sub­jects avail­able from Form 1, which be­gan last Sep­tem­ber and ex­pand­ed to 80 pri­ma­ry schools last No­vem­ber.

Last Ju­ly, the MoE said that da­ta over the past 10- 15 years showed an av­er­age of 47 per cent of stu­dents leave school an­nu­al­ly with­out achiev­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in at least five Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate (CSEC) sub­jects, in­clud­ing Math and Eng­lish. This lim­its stu­dents’ abil­i­ty to ad­vance to ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion and find jobs above min­i­mum wage, the MoE said.

“Stud­ies done over many years in Trinidad and To­ba­go have ex­plored the un­de­ni­able link be­tween ed­u­ca­tion­al achieve­ment, re­liance on the gov­ern­ment’s sup­port net­work and crime.”

There are eco­nom­ic, so­cial and se­cu­ri­ty im­pli­ca­tions from these low lev­els of ed­u­ca­tion­al achieve­ment at the sec­ondary lev­el which af­fects the gov­ern­ment’s re­al­i­sa­tion of Vi­sion 2030.

An analy­sis of the char­ac­ter­is­tics com­mon among sec­ondary schools with low suc­cess lev­els in­cludes a greater than 60 per cent in­take of stu­dents with SEA scores un­der 50 per cent, par­ents with low­er so­cioe­co­nom­ic cir­cum­stances and stu­dents from sin­gle-par­ent homes. Ab­sent or in­ac­tive school sup­port net­works such as PTAs and alum­ni or­gan­i­sa­tions, as well as high stu­dent ab­sen­teeism, stu­dent at­tri­tion, in­dis­ci­pline and faulty school in­fra­struc­ture, were oth­er com­mon fac­tors in low-achiev­ing schools.

The MoE’s reme­dies in­clude im­ple­men­ta­tion of the an­nu­al School De­vel­op­ment Plan, ef­fi­cient ap­point­ment and train­ing of heads of de­part­ments, deans, prin­ci­pals and vice prin­ci­pals, recog­ni­tion of learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties and as­sign­ment of school so­cial work­ers.