‘I want to go to school’

WESTERN BUREAU:

AFTER THREE years of unsuccessful attempts to get him enrolled in a high school close enough to his home, more than anything else, 16-year-old Daniel Gibbon wants to attend classes more frequently than the two days weekly he can now afford to.

The youngster, who lives in Darliston, Westmoreland, and attends Petersfield High in the parish, has been finding it difficult to attend school regularly as he often does not have the $1,700 he would need to travel back and forth each day.

His inconsistent attendance has resulted in him being held back, having to repeat on more than one occasion after failing to grasp enough to progress to the next grade level.

“Most of the times, I am not catching up with my bookwork, and that is the reason why I have to repeat grades. I am going into grade nine because I had to repeat, and I repeated two years,” Daniel told The Gleaner as he outlined his plight.

“I was asking my mom if I get to Maud McLeod High School, if I could go back in grade 10. It should be grade 11 that I should be in now, but if it is even grade 10 I could go back in right now, I would appreciate it,” he added. “I want to go to school consistently and be in my correct grade.”

Maud McLeod High School is only a few minutes’ walk from where Gibbon lives with his mother, Corcia Gibbon, and they both believe that his attendance there would ease the financial burden of sending him to school.

However, the senior Gibbon said that it has been an uphill battle in the past three years to get him a place at Maud McLeod, further complicated by his having been placed at Munro College in St Elizabeth following his performance in the Primary Exit Profile examination.

ADDED PRESSURE

The pressure she is currently facing is not helped by her ongoing battle with a so-far undiagnosed illness.

“I’ve been trying to get him into Maud McLeod High School for three full years. The first year, they said they weren’t able to take any students, and later I applied before the school term was over for him to get in on the other school term; then they just turned him down. The third year, this year, I applied again, and my mother also wrote a letter to them on June 15, and they turned him down,” Gibbon told The Gleaner.

“The first time I applied, they did not tell me to bring in any report for him or anything like that, so I did not do that; they just said they could not take him, and I left it at that. The second year, they told me to bring in the report, but I told them I was sick and he did not go to school for nearly three months, so I did not have a report to show,” Gibbon added.

“When I called Munro College, they said they could not give me a report because he did not do any exam and he had been out of school for a while. I had people trying to get him in at Maud McLeod, so many persons tried, and it was a complete failure. I don’t know what the problem is.”

Efforts by The Gleaner to speak with Avis Bailey-Coleman, the principal of Maud McLeod High School, on the Gibbon family’s concerns were unsuccessful. A representative at the school indicated that she was out of office.

However, Dr Michelle Pinnock, the regional director for the Ministry of Education’s Region Four, which has responsibility for Westmoreland, revealed that a previous request had in fact been sent to facilitate Daniel Gibbon’s transfer to Maud McLeod High.

“Information for this child to attend Maud McLeod High was sent out, but the number on the database for the mother was stolen and so there was a break in communication. This parent selected Munro College and the child was placed there, and then she transferred him to Petersfield High, and we have a responsibility to ensure all students are in school, so we facilitate these changes,” said Pinnock.

It is also understood that a meeting is to be held with Ms Gibbon to determine the next steps in her son’s school placement.

But while that meeting is being arranged, the frustrated mother told The Gleaner that her son is always in a state of readiness for when he can go to school full-time.

“The child has ironed his khaki, and he has his shoes, his bag, and everything else put down on the settee. Every day he says, ‘Mommy, what dem a say? Mi nah go a school?’ and every day he keeps asking, to show you that it’s a child who wants to go to school,” said Gibbon.

christopher.thomas@gleanerjm.com