RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gadb­sy-Dol­ly says all stu­dents who fail to re­turn to school will be re­ferred to the Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion to de­ter­mine the rea­son for their non-at­ten­dance.

She was re­spond­ing to con­cerns from the gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion Kady Beck­les that some stu­dents have been forced to drop out of school so that they could work to as­sist their strug­gling par­ents.

Min­is­ter Gads­by-Dol­ly said, “All stu­dents who are ab­sent from school with­out ex­cuse for ex­tend­ed pe­ri­ods are re­ferred to the Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion. This is­sue, which pre­dates COVID, is a dif­fi­cult one to solve in some cas­es, as the par­ent may not have pro­vid­ed the school with cur­rent con­tact in­for­ma­tion.”

She added, “Com­mu­ni­ty Po­lice are then in­formed, to reach the par­ent and child, and bring the child back to the school sys­tem.”

She not­ed how­ev­er that com­pul­so­ry school age ends at 16, and in some cas­es, the stu­dents who leave school may have at­tained that age, and are there­fore not oblig­ed to re­turn.

Based on the re­view of the da­ta for Wednes­day a to­tal of 66 per cent of stu­dents were in at­ten­dance at sec­ondary schools. 

On Mon­day, teacher and stu­dent at­ten­dance av­er­aged 84.5 per cent and 65 per cent re­spec­tive­ly, while at pri­ma­ry schools, 91 per cent of teach­ers and 73 per cent of stu­dents were in at­ten­dance. 

On Tues­day, Beck­les said TTUTA had re­ceived com­plaints that some stu­dents had no mon­ey for trans­porta­tion. She said some stu­dents had to stay at home to look at their younger sib­lings while their par­ents went out to work and oth­ers had no mon­ey for uni­forms, al­though some schools have re­laxed the uni­form stip­u­la­tion.