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Friday, May 30, 2025

Too many school

dropouts — Antoine

by

2789 days ago
20171010
D'Abadie/O'Meara MP Ancil Antoine, in Parliament yesterday.

D'Abadie/O'Meara MP Ancil Antoine, in Parliament yesterday.

COURTESY OFFICE OF THE PARLIAMENT

D’Abadie/O'meara MP An­cil An­toine yes­ter­day ap­pealed to prin­ci­pals and teach­ers to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for their stu­dents, as too many stu­dents are drop­ping out of the sec­ondary school sys­tem.

An­toine said the in­creas­ing num­bers of dropouts in the school sys­tem was at­tribut­ing to scores of young men and women be­ing left un­skilled, un­trained and un­em­ploy­able and with a bleak fu­ture.

An­toine was de­liv­er­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the bud­get de­bate in Par­lia­ment.

He said while ed­u­ca­tion has been al­lo­cat­ed $7.29 bil­lion in the 2018 fis­cal pack­age, there was a short­age of pri­ma­ry school place­ment at the de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools in his con­stituen­cy.

An­toine said it was al­so ev­i­dent that “quite a num­ber of (school) dropouts has been en­gag­ing the at­ten­tion of Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia.

“There is a high drop-out rate. We are pro­duc­ing young men and who are un­skilled, un­train­able and un­em­ploy­able, ex­cept for the crim­i­nal class in our midst,” he said.

An­toine did not throw blame on the shoul­ders of the Gov­ern­ment or Op­po­si­tion, as he urged prin­ci­pals and teach­ers to take own­er­ship of their prod­uct.

He said the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion and the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion can al­so help to some de­gree.

“You have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty es­pe­cial­ly when we are spend­ing $7.2 bil­lion on the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem for this year alone. You’ll have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to give us some bet­ter cit­i­zens com­ing out of the sec­ondary schools.”

He said the time had come time for the coun­try to get its get act to­geth­er and pro­duce bet­ter cit­i­zens.


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