Where are the students?
Published:Friday | March 4, 2022 | 12:05 AM
Tracey Ann Holloway Richards, principal of Maxfield Park Primary School, used last week Friday’s Jamaica Day celebration at the school as an opportunity to test how many students from her institution would return in full for face-to-face classes following the mid-term break in March, and 106 students did not turn up for school.
She and educators from the institution enticed students to appear for an all-day concert on February 25 in recognition of Jamaica Day.
However, by midday, which was the climax of the concert, only about 397 were in attendance.
“Before the coronavirus, Maxfield Park Primary School had a population of 503 students. Since the pandemic, when we are given the chance to come back for face-to-face classes, we now have 397 students,” Holloway Richards explained to The Gleaner.
Of the absent 106, eight were students who should be preparing for the upcoming Primary Exit Profile exam.
parents are without jobs
Holloway Richards said she and the teachers are speculating that some of the absent students have either: relocated, transferred (to other schools) or their parents simply cannot afford the financial cost to send them to face-to-face classes.
“Parents are without jobs for different reasons. Some are not able to find the money for the school fee [and] the lunch money to send them back to school. I’m hoping to God that by the end of April we will be able get back at least 80 per cent of those [absent] students,” Holloway Richards told The Gleaner.
She continued, “We’ve tried to contact some of those parents via WhatsApp and phone call. Some parents’ phone numbers have changed. Some don’t have a phone ... various reasons. We have to understand that this pandemic has caused a serious impact on education and I want parents to know that it is important for them to send the children back to school.”
Holloway Richards said since the most recent phased reopening of face-to-face classes at her school, she has to be re-registering children for this academic year, which is now halfway into the school year.
“On Friday morning, a child came in for the first time since September of last year. This child is in grade five, so we have students that are out there [and] parents, who, for various reasons, have decided not to send them back to school, and it’s really causing a problem, because the longer these children stay out of the classroom, it’s going to be more detrimental to teaching and learning, not just only at Maxfield Park Primary School, but across the island.”