Thousands still missing as student tracker picks up steam
Published:Wednesday | April 13, 2022 | 12:11 AM
The Ministry of Education and Youth’s ‘Yard-to-Yard Find the Child Initiative’ is gaining momentum, with 87,446 students now re-engaged from the 120,000 that could not be accounted for during the earlier part of the coronavirus pandemic.
The ministry reported on Tuesday a weekly average of 32,554 unaccounted-for-students over the period February 14 to April 1 this year.
In her contribution to the Sectoral Debate in Parliament on Tuesday, Minister of Education and Youth Fayval Williams said her ministry was committed to finding the remaining students.
Making an appeal to all Jamaicans, Williams urged residents to call 211 to provide information on children in their communities who were not attending school.
“Our internal officers will visit homes to understand the issues why the children are not in school. Together with our Child Protection and Family Services Agency, and with the help of other sister ministries, we commit to doing all we can to help the situations in the homes and get all our students in schools and learning again,” Williams said.
Turning her attention to 10th-graders, the minister said special focus would be placed on this group as the data suggest that COVID-19 has had the greatest impact on them.
The current grade 10 students had their first year of high school in grade seven during the academic year September 2018 to June 2019.
“They would have missed approximately one-third of their second year, which was grade eight, during September 2019 to June 2020. They missed all of their third year, which was grade nine during September 2020 to June 2021,” Williams noted.
Additionally, she said the grade 10 students have already missed about half of their fourth year in high school during the current school year.
With the typical grade 10 student about 15 years old and entering adolescence, Williams said that they would have missed out on two years of a structured school/learning environment and almost two years of building friendships.
Williams said that the ministry has embarked on an intervention exercise targeting these students, which started on April 6 to 13 and will continue from April 25 to 29 under the theme ‘Embracing a Winning Well-being’.
As part of this drive, Williams said the ministry will focus on providing psychosocial support to grade 10 students primarily to help them through this period.