State of­fi­cials are alarmed that in the last sev­en years, more than 5,000 stu­dents have dropped out of pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school. Doc­u­ments sub­mit­ted to Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) mem­bers which Guardian Me­dia ob­tained gave a break­down of the num­ber of male and fe­male dropouts in the eight ed­u­ca­tion­al dis­tricts in T&T be­tween the years 2012 to 2019, which amount­ed to 5,074 stu­dents.

Of this fig­ure, 2,980 were record­ed as males at both the pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary lev­els with 2,094 be­ing fe­males. Forms Three and Five had the high­est per­cent­age of male dropouts. It was al­so re­vealed that from ear­ly as Stan­dard One, boys show signs of un­der-per­form­ing in the class­room. The dropouts have been oc­cur­ring from In­fants Year One to Fifth Form.

This has prompt­ed the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion (MOE) to launch an in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion to find the rea­sons be­hind the wor­ry­ing trend.

On No­vem­ber 1, the JSC in­to Hu­man Rights, Equal­i­ty and Di­ver­si­ty chaired by Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly ex­pressed con­cern at the dropout rate among the stu­dents and the fact that some have gone on to join crim­i­nal gangs. Of­fi­cials of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT), UWI Roytec and the MOE ap­peared be­fore the com­mit­tee which ex­am­ined the aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance of boys in pub­lic pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools.

Dr Judy Rocke, UTT’s pro­gramme leader, Cen­tre for Ed­u­ca­tion Stud­ies said the uni­ver­si­ty did a study to de­ter­mine the rea­sons for the dropouts. Rocke iden­ti­fied lack of mon­ey, teach­ers not en­gag­ing stu­dents enough, pover­ty and stu­dents choos­ing jobs over ed­u­ca­tion as some of the rea­sons.

•Sta­tis­tics re­vealed that from 2014 to 2019 there were 2,607 male sec­ondary school dropouts.

•At the pri­ma­ry lev­el, 373 boys left school be­tween 2012 and 2019.

•The num­ber of fe­male dropouts in sec­ondary school was 1,868 with 226 leav­ing pri­ma­ry schools.

•A pe­rusal of the sta­tis­tics re­vealed that 2013-2014 record­ed 151 male and fe­male pri­ma­ry school dropouts—the high­est fig­ure to date.

•Sev­en­ty-one of these dropouts were from the Ca­roni ed­u­ca­tion­al dis­trict alone.

•The least amount of dropouts—31—were in 2016/2107.

•In­ter­est­ing­ly, ten of these dropouts fell with­in the Ca­roni ed­u­ca­tion­al dis­trict.

•While To­ba­go record­ed no dropouts for the years 2015-2016 and 2016-2017, the fig­ure sky­rock­et­ed to 12 in 2017-2018.

•From 2014 to 2017 a to­tal of 3,134 sec­ondary stu­dents left school—of this fig­ure, 1,885 were males with 1,249 be­ing fe­males.

•The year 2014-2015 record­ed the high­est amount of male dropouts—669. The fol­low­ing year the fig­ure dropped to 605, but in­creased to 611 in the 2016-2017 pe­ri­od.

•The bulk of the dropouts were from the ed­u­ca­tion dis­trict of Ca­roni.

JSC mem­bers speak out

Mem­ber of the JSC Es­mond Forde said he was per­turbed that there were 82 male and 69 fe­male pri­ma­ry school dropouts for the pe­ri­od 2013/2014 pe­ri­od alone. He con­curred that some stu­dents who left school have been en­gag­ing in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties.

JSC mem­ber Hazel Thomp­son-Ahye said the is­sue of dropouts had ex­ist­ed since 2009 and won­dered if the au­thor­i­ties had been in "slum­ber­land” for all these years, as the mat­ter had been left un­at­tend­ed. Thomp­son-Ahye said dropouts have not been dis­ap­pear­ing in­to the wood­work. Many of them, she said, have been join­ing gangs.

Gads­by-Dol­ly, mean­while, said by not pro­vid­ing an ed­u­ca­tion to these boys we have been ex­pos­ing them to "ne­far­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ties."

She called on the min­istry to es­tab­lish a ro­bust high-qual­i­ty re­search de­part­ment with ded­i­cat­ed staffing to pro­cure da­ta which will be used as a pol­i­cy frame­work in tack­ling the lin­ger­ing prob­lem.

Gar­cia: Min­istry track­ing per­for­mance

Re­spond­ing to the is­sue, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia said stu­dents leave school for dif­fer­ent rea­sons.

Chief among them is a lack of fi­nanc­ing to en­able some stu­dents to con­tin­ue their ed­u­ca­tion, while oth­ers opt to pur­sue a trade and some end up mi­grat­ing with their fam­i­lies.

Gar­cia said the dropout rates from 2012 to present had crossed the 5,000 mark at pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools and he was “very con­cerned about it.”

He ad­mit­ted that the find­ings and rec­om­men­da­tions at the JSC prompt­ed the Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion and Re­search at the MOE to launch an in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“It is not a mat­ter of stu­dents just drop­ping out and do­ing noth­ing, chil­dren are leav­ing and go­ing to oth­er in­sti­tu­tions for ter­tiary train­ing and in many in­stances, they want to learn a trade.”

He said checks at pri­vate in­sti­tu­tions would yield more da­ta in this area.

How­ev­er, Gar­cia ad­mit­ted some stu­dents re­mained idle at home.

This, he said, was not an in­dict­ment on the min­istry as they con­tin­ued to ful­fil their man­date to en­sure schools re­main func­tion­al.

Asked to re­spond to claims that some stu­dents have been drop­ping out of school to be­come mem­bers of crim­i­nal gangs, Gar­cia said this was pure spec­u­la­tion.

“I have no proof of this. Of course, there are a num­ber of gangs in this coun­try and the num­bers are in­creas­ing, but I can­not say if there is a cor­re­la­tion be­tween chil­dren who are al­leged to have dropped out and the ex­pan­sion of these gangs We are do­ing some in­ves­ti­ga­tions on our end be­cause it is not enough to just state that chil­dren are drop­ping out be­cause they want to join a gang.”

Gar­cia be­lieves that while some stu­dents have been leav­ing school be­fore time, it does not mean they are not be­ing en­gaged in pro­duc­tive ac­tiv­i­ties.

Ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cials said while par­ents are re­quired to in­form school prin­ci­pals when a child is be­ing with­drawn from school, there is no sin­gle rule com­pelling them to re­port why and the rea­sons be­hind it.

Gar­cia said the min­istry had al­so start­ed track­ing the per­for­mance of stu­dents from In­fants straight to Sixth Form.

Karim: It's dis­turb­ing

Weigh­ing in on the is­sue, for­mer ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter Fazal Karim de­scribed the dropouts rate as dis­turb­ing.

"It is very dis­heart­en­ing that so many young peo­ple are drop­ping out of the pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school sys­tem, some of whom are join­ing gangs."

Karim said the dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of males to fe­males dropouts tells our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem is fail­ing our young men while gang lead­ers are em­brac­ing them.

While the min­istry ex­pressed the need for a high-qual­i­ty re­search unit to iden­ti­fy the core is­sue, Karim ques­tioned why the Gov­ern­ment stopped pump­ing mon­ey in­to the High­er Ed­u­ca­tion Re­search Fund which falls un­der the min­istry's re­mit.

That fund, Karim said, was de­signed to as­sist ter­tiary-lev­el in­sti­tu­tions in re­search­ing key ar­eas of na­tion­al pri­or­i­ty of which crime and ed­u­ca­tion should be a pri­or­i­ty.

He said the ac­tions of the Gov­ern­ment are in­verse to the so­lu­tions.

"It is no sur­prise that the prob­lem has wors­ened in the past four years. In its cur­rent de­sign, the Gov­ern­ment has failed to deal with school dropouts which have been cor­re­lat­ed to in­creas­es in gang mem­ber­ship. If the Gov­ern­ment in­vests mean­ing­ful­ly in ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing, they will cut ex­pen­di­ture in our jails,” Karim said.

The is­sue of dropouts, Karim said, was mul­ti-di­men­sion­al and re­quires care­ful thought and ac­tion.

He sug­gest­ed:

•Prop­er di­ag­nos­tic as­sess­ment of stu­dents.

•Sys­tems to track at-risk stu­dents.

•Ad­e­quate psy­cho-so­cial sup­port, di­ver­si­ty in ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties, in­clud­ing tech­ni­cal/vo­ca­tion­al. ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing to cater for di­verse learn­ing.

•Sup­port sys­tems for stu­dents con­strained by so­cio-eco­nom­ic is­sues.