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Thursday, July 24, 2025

'Students drop out of school, take up jobs as COVID pressure hits'

by

Anna-Lisa Paul and Raphael John-Lall
1559 days ago
20210418
Minister of Education Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly

Minister of Education Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly

Al­most three months af­ter a men­tal health ex­pert warned of the grow­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal ef­fects that stu­dents are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing as a re­sult of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and the sub­se­quent clo­sure of schools, the sit­u­a­tion has con­tin­ued to es­ca­late with younger chil­dren self-harm­ing, a high­er than usu­al lev­el of stu­dent ab­sen­teeism and the sec­ondary school drop-out rate in­creas­ing as chil­dren take up jobs to help their fam­i­lies sur­vive.

Ac­cord­ing to Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer, Na­tion­al Coun­cil of the Par­ent-Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (NCP­TA) Shami­la Ra­heem, one school in the Ca­roni Ed­u­ca­tion Dis­trict had record­ed a drop-out rate of be­tween eight and ten per cent among its sec­ondary stu­dents be­tween Jan­u­ary to present.

She claimed there were more schools in this dis­trict where sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions are oc­cur­ring.

Ra­heem said the usu­al ex­cuse was that the stu­dents need to work to pro­vide fi­nan­cial sup­port to their fam­i­ly, many of whom are sin­gle par­ent units or where par­ents have ex­pe­ri­enced some form of job loss/re­trench­ment be­cause of the pan­dem­ic.

She told the Sun­day Guardian this trend was not lim­it­ed to her dis­trict alone. “At a school in Princes Town, the child be­gan work­ing in a gro­cery and the moth­er said she sup­ports that be­cause there is no one else to help them," Ra­heem said

“There are a lot of cas­es like that where the chil­dren, be­cause of the eco­nom­ic strain on some fam­i­lies, have no choice but to go out and find a job.

“There are so many fam­i­lies who do not even have ba­sic items such as rice and flour,” Ra­heem added.

 Association of Psychiatrists of T&T secretary Dr Varma Deyalsingh

Association of Psychiatrists of T&T secretary Dr Varma Deyalsingh

Back in Jan­u­ary, the sec­re­tary of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Psy­chi­a­trists of T&T Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh called on the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion (MOE) to in­tro­duce a de­pres­sion rat­ing scale to its on­line cur­ricu­lum, so trou­bled stu­dents could be iden­ti­fied and so­cial work­ers can in­ter­vene.

And even though the MOE has con­firmed in­creased re­quests for in­ter­ven­tions from stu­dents from March 2020 to the present and said they were work­ing to help, con­cerned stake­hold­ers added that not enough was be­ing done to ad­dress the is­sue.

Shamila Raheem

Shamila Raheem

NCP­TA to MOE: Act now

Ap­peal­ing to the MOE to act now be­fore it is too late, Ra­heem said the de­ci­sion to on­ly al­low Forms Four to Six stu­dents to re­turn to the phys­i­cal class­room on April 12 was “a ma­jor set­back for these kids.”

She said the lack of so­cial in­ter­ac­tion with teach­ers and class­mates was the main rea­son be­hind the in­creas­ing lev­els of frus­tra­tion and anx­i­ety a lot of stu­dents are now dis­play­ing as on­line school­ing re­sumed.

A 13-year-old pupil from the North East­ern Ed­u­ca­tion Dis­trict who is due to write the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am on June 10 made an at­tempt on her life over a week ago by con­sum­ing bleach. She lat­er told po­lice of­fi­cers and the psy­chi­a­trist that she was stressed over on­line school­ing and felt un­able to cope with ex­am prepa­ra­tions.

Schools across T&T in­clud­ing pre-schools, pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary in­sti­tu­tions have been closed since March 16, 2020.

This is just the lat­est case of chil­dren harm­ing them­selves. In Jan­u­ary, a 14-year-old from Ch­agua­nas died by sui­cide even though he had been re­ceiv­ing coun­selling.

Ra­heem said, “More coun­selling needs to be done. We need so­cial work­ers to come in­to the Zoom class­room now so they can reach those who need help.”

She be­lieves sim­i­lar in­ci­dents of self-harm could be ex­pect­ed in the com­ing months if there are no se­ri­ous in­ter­ven­tions.

APPSS: The is­sue is re­al

Pres­i­dent of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Prin­ci­pals of Pub­lic Sec­ondary Schools of T&T (APPSS), Sher­ra Car­ring­ton-James said while they do not have of­fi­cial sta­tis­tics to re­in­force these claims, re­ports reach­ing them in­di­cate stu­dents are not log­ging in to on­line ed­u­ca­tion­al plat­forms as they should and that ef­forts to have their par­ents col­lect pack­ages are not be­ing re­spond­ed to.

She said, “It is a re­al cir­cum­stance but as to how preva­lent it is, I can­not say.”

In­di­cat­ing that any child whose ed­u­ca­tion has been af­fect­ed is of con­cern to the APSS, Car­ring­ton-James said is­sues can be re­ferred to the Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion (SSSD) via prin­ci­pals at re­spec­tive schools.

How­ev­er, she re­mains adamant that in terms of "what may po­ten­tial­ly be a na­tion­wide prob­lem, that is some­thing the MOE must ad­dress.”

Car­ring­ton-James said, “In or­der to as­sess the mag­ni­tude of the in­ci­dents we are aware of, you would re­al­ly have to have re­sources to go out there in­to homes and find out where these chil­dren are.”

She said there were mul­ti­ple rea­sons why stu­dents may not be at­tend­ing class­es such as lack of ac­cess to a de­vice; lack of con­nec­tiv­i­ty; and even a lack of fi­nan­cial re­sources by par­ents to col­lect pack­ages as they may not live close to the school.

Ac­cord­ing to Car­ring­ton-James some stu­dents have thrived from be­ing on the vir­tu­al plat­form while oth­ers have not.

T&T not alone in this grow­ing phe­nom­e­non

Ac­cord­ing to an NBC re­port two weeks ago, the num­ber of chil­dren in the Unit­ed States be­tween the ages six-12 who vis­it­ed chil­dren’s hos­pi­tals for sui­ci­dal thoughts or self-harm had more than dou­bled since 2016.

Pre­sent­ing her views on this trend, the pres­i­dent of the T&T As­so­ci­a­tion of Psy­chol­o­gists (TTAP) Wendy Je­re­mie said they had been re­ceiv­ing calls from par­ents about this phe­nom­e­non.

She in­di­cat­ed, “Chil­dren are hav­ing sui­cide ideation and re­quests are com­ing from younger and younger chil­dren. Calls are al­so com­ing from teenagers who can’t cope.”

Je­re­mie said on­line class­es are a mode of learn­ing that has now be­come the norm be­cause of these un­prece­dent­ed times and it has af­fect­ed all stra­ta of learn­ing in­clud­ing ter­tiary, sec­ondary, pri­ma­ry and even those at the kinder­garten lev­el.

To as­sist stu­dents who are stressed, Je­re­mie en­cour­aged par­ents to cre­ate an en­vi­ron­ment at home that could lend it­self to en­sur­ing this type of learn­ing is suc­cess­ful.

For ex­am­ple, par­ents must con­tin­ue with rou­tines and en­sure their chil­dren are at their com­put­ers when class­es be­gin.

She ad­vised, “Par­ents must fos­ter an en­vi­ron­ment that pro­vides their chil­dren to be ac­tive­ly en­gaged in ac­tiv­i­ties that do not re­quire the use of com­put­ers, lap­tops for ex­tend­ed pe­ri­ods of time.”

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, she urged par­ents to lis­ten to what their chil­dren have to say and to get them out of the house to re­lax.

“Most chil­dren are al­ready en­gaged in play­ing games on­line via cell phones. Par­ents should at­tempt to try their best to fos­ter some in­no­v­a­tive ways to have their chil­dren ac­tive­ly en­gage in ac­tiv­i­ties away from the screen. Some­times hav­ing cre­ative ways of play­ing or par­tic­i­pat­ing in old-time games such as moral, hop­scotch, crick­et, foot­ball, catch. It is as sim­ple as that.”

An­oth­er way of get­ting stu­dents to open up is us­ing words to drama­tise what they have read or learnt dur­ing the day away from the com­put­er en­vi­ron­ment.

Je­re­mie sug­gest­ed, "Have them take a walk around the block and dis­cus­sions should take place then. Very light dis­cus­sions. Chil­dren should be giv­en space to speak and air their is­sues out­side of the house while walk­ing."

Teach­ers, she said, need to de­vel­op in­no­v­a­tive ways to re­ceive feed­back from their stu­dents. They al­so need to fos­ter an en­vi­ron­ment in which stu­dents can give their feed­back about how they feel dur­ing this stress­ful time and, of course, try to as­sist them.”

The TTAP is part of the Men­tal Health Psy­choso­cial Sup­port Net­work (MH­PSS) which was launched by the MOH in Jan­u­ary 2021 and mem­bers of the pub­lic can use Find­CareTT to ac­cess ser­vices pro­vid­ed on this net­work.

Find­carett.com con­tains a di­rec­to­ry of ser­vices de­liv­ered by the Tech­ni­cal Work­ing Group of the MH­PSS which was ac­ti­vat­ed in 2020 in re­sponse to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

TTAP is al­so a part of the Vir­tu­al Well­ness Plat­form which of­fers free ser­vices to the pub­lic. Peo­ple wish­ing to use the hot­line can log on to the web­site, www.vir­tu­al­well­ness.com

IWRN president Adriana Sandrine Isaac-Rattan

IWRN president Adriana Sandrine Isaac-Rattan

Guardian Archives

IWRN Head: The Is­sues Are Not Be­ing Ad­dressed

Re­fer­ring to the Stan­dard Five pupil who made an at­tempt on her life over a week ago, Pres­i­dent of the In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Re­source Net­work (IWRN) Adri­ana San­drine Isaac-Rat­tan said it was sad but that “she was on­ly one of many.”

With­out com­pro­mis­ing their clients, Isaac-Rat­tan said the IWRN’s ef­forts had found many sit­u­a­tions where par­ents are feel­ing stressed af­ter los­ing their jobs and sit­u­a­tions where many women have be­come vic­tims of do­mes­tic abuse.

She said “Be­cause of all those adult stress­es, the chil­dren in the space are feel­ing it be­cause they feel no one cares about them, the on­line space is not do­ing well be­cause we have in­suf­fi­cient mon­i­tor­ing and in­con­sis­ten­cy with some of the class­es...those are some of the re­ports we have been re­ceiv­ing.”

Long­ing for the in-per­son con­nec­tion with oth­ers, Isaac-Rat­tan said some chil­dren were re­fus­ing to learn as a re­sult.

Isaac-Rat­tan has be­come con­cerned about the sit­u­a­tion as she be­lieves it is a “tip­ping point” which the au­thor­i­ties need to ad­dress ur­gent­ly. “We have to look at how to quell that im­me­di­ate­ly in or­der to sal­vage the chil­dren’s men­tal health.”

Brac­ing for sim­i­lar types of in­ci­dents ahead, the IWRN head said, “We need par­ents to be more ob­ser­vant be­cause right now, a lot of per­sons are caught up in their own sit­u­a­tions and as a re­sult of that they don’t have the kind of time to ded­i­cate to the child.

“If we don’t come to­geth­er as a coun­try to act now to save our youths, we can ex­pect more in­ci­dents like these in short or­der.”

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter: We Are Work­ing To Help

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said the Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion had seen an in­crease in stu­dent re­quests for coun­selling since the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic hit the coun­try last year.

Via What­sApp, she said, “The SSSD through the School So­cial Work­ers and Guid­ance Coun­sel­lors, has in­di­cat­ed an in­crease in re­quests for in­ter­ven­tions with stu­dents since March 2020 to present.”

“The is­sues vary, but there has not been a marked in­crease in re­fer­ral of sui­ci­dal stu­dents. They have been of­fer­ing coun­selling to stu­dents on­line as well as face to face where ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary.”

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