Students and Truancy

by Kymberli Whittaker 

As the new school year approaches, preparation is being made by parents and children alike for the start of the new school term. Some children look forward to new shoes, a crisp set of uniforms, new books, knapsack, and a shiny pair of shoes. The sad truth is, for some children, when school starts the shoes lose their shine, and being back at school loses its novelty. It is back to the same old routine, getting dressed to sit in a class hour for almost 6 hours a day. As the days pass, less and less students in many primary and high schools across our nation simply stop going to school everyday.

An unfortunate number of students attend school on an ad-hoc basis and then turn up for exams, and as expected perform poorly. They lack the basic skills which would give them some amount of leverage in the real world, and the cycle of poverty and crime is perpetuated as a result.

An active Truancy Unit is needed in the Ministry of Education to deal solely with Truants or absentee students and also parents need to be held accountable for their children’s absence from school without explanation. Many students stay home. This is a hard concept for many who have passed through the traditional high school system to understand, where a register is marked daily and if there are any discrepancies in behavior or attendance the parent or care giver is called in. Many students with the knowledge of their parents stay at home or roam the streets during school hours.

At the end of the last school year I was able to view the school report of a female high student from a Corporate area non-traditional high school with over 100 absent days. The teacher recommended in the report that if she attended school on a consistent basis that her performance would be better. Of course this Grade 9 student failed all the subjects she sat in exams. “Where are the parents?” I asked in shock. The reply I received is that they were poor and had no money, and also that the child did not go because she did not feel like attending. The parent was called in to the school, but nothing came of it.

Through investigations, I found out that this child was on the PATH programme, and received assistance allowing her to get meals free at her institution and also to get cash to offset expenses. She was removed from the PATH list most likely because of her poor attendance record, however there was no evidence that more was done. I believe children should not have a choice to attend school or not. They cannot be left to their own devices to choose to go. Their brains are underdeveloped and  they cannot be trusted to make right decisions. They are not adults and a sustem needs to be put in place to mandate them to go.

Chronic absenteeism needs to be tackled immediately. Section 27 of the Education Code says a student can be dropped from the register if he is absent for up to a month without notifying the institution of his withdrawal, but before we reach this far, I advocate that there should be an authority to regulate absenteeism, so that teachers on marking a student absent for an apparopriate period to be decided, can report it and truancy officers can investigate each case to decide how to proceed.. If money is the problem, the children should be placed on the PATH programme as this is one of the reasons it was instituted and monitored and if they lapse there should be consequences. If there are behaviourial issues, the children should be identified, so that corrective steps may be taken to curb their behavior through boot camp, rehab or therapy. If the parents are hindrances to their child’s attendance, I advocate for stiff penalties to deal with them.

Parents who prevent their children from attending school, for different reasons, such as forcing them to sell on the road, or work in the family farm during school hours should be held criminally liable for their failure. Child labour is often overlooked in Jamaica, and some parents exploit the fact that more persons are willing to give to a child beggar than an adult. Some parents simply do not enforce rules at home and promote indiscipline, which results in the children running amuck when they go on the road. Then we wonder why there is so much lawlessness and lack of discipline that pervades Jamaica.

Schools should be held accountable for failure to abide by the regulations of reporting Absentee children or truants, and it is only then, we can really say we are making steps to educate our nation as a whole. Too many are falling through the cracks and then we as a nation look, condemn and try to get our own kids into reputable institutions, wondering how over 100 schools can be operating at a less than desirable level. These are the children who do not do well, continuously repeat or are promoted to other grades to flunk out. They are not able to formally enter the working world and this also contributes to the low illiteracy rate. These are the people whose interviews we laugh at when watching the news, giving birth to viral videos; the people who we see and never want to associate with or cause us to hold our purses near to us when we go on the road.

A little interest goes a long way. How can our students learn if they are not in school. For this school year I challenge you all to not support truancy and absenteeism. When we see children on the road during idling during school hours, especially in uniform- call the school, call the police, call the Ministry of Education…honestly I don’t know who you are to call, but something has to be done. We need a TRUANCY HOTLINE!

Take a stand against illiteracy…Take a stand against poor exam results….Take a stand for Jamaica’s development…Take a stand against Truancy.