‘Take advantage of the opportunities’

WESTERN BUREAU:

Dr Kasan Troupe, permanent secretary for the Ministry of Education and Youth (MOEY), is encouraging students to take advantage of investments which have been made for their education, and avoid negative practices like continuous and deliberate absenteeism from classes.

She was addressing students from Anchovy High School in St James, including those from other schools within the MOEY’s Region 4, which covers the parishes of St James, Westmoreland and Hanover, during the Transforming Education for National Development (TREND) School Pop-Up series recently.

“Some of you boys and girls are not being your best selves; you are not into your classes as you ought to,” Troupe said sharing that she is aware of the practice based on her experiences as a student, teacher and former principal.

“Some of you, we have to find you in the corners; you don’t take the books to school. We sent you the e-books, but some of you didn’t open them. I can tell that because I see the data – some of you don’t give in your homework, some of you don’t turn up for classes online, you loiter, you wait outside for the last bus, or you continue to wake up late,” Troupe continued.

The MOEY permanent secretary urged the students to attend classes and shoulder their responsibility of equipping themselves as rounded individuals for higher education and the workplace.

“Some of you are not deliberate about your future, and so we want you to trend with us; we want you to take responsibility for your own learning. If a teacher is not in the classroom, you can do something productive, take out a book, get out your assignments, get onto the websites, and get on to the learning materials,” she encouraged.

“My task today is to call you into action to make sure that you take advantage of the opportunities. Come into the classrooms; we pay the teachers to be here, it may not be the best, but it is an expenditure. We buy the books, we pay the light; we pay the water; we pay the telephone bills; yes, we give subsidies so that you can do your exams, that’s an investment in you.”

CORRECTIVE SOLUTIONS

But Steve Gordon, principal of Manning’s School in Westmoreland, says while the practice of students staying away from classes has long been a recurring national problem in public schools, that is not the case for his students.

“We don’t have widespread student absenteeism. And if you are talking about students who are at school and are staying away from classes; we do not have a widespread [occurrence] of that either,” Gordon told The Gleaner.

He noted that when incidents of that nature occur, a consultation meeting is held with students and their parents to arrive at corrective solutions.

“When we do have absenteeism from school itself, we call in the parents, find out what happens, and figure out how we are going to solve the problem. If there is a student who is absenting himself from class, the same mechanism would apply in the first instance,” the Manning’s School administrator explained.

“We give the child what is known as a report card, so the child will go to class, and they will have the teacher sign and indicate on the form what time and what day, as well as to indicate how the student performs in the class,” Gordon continued.

This process, the principal said, will be carried out over approximately two weeks, following which a reassessment of the child will be done.

NOT CHRONIC

Gregory Brown, principal of Knockalva Technical High School in Hanover, told The Gleaner that while a handful of students are deliberately sculling classes, the practice is not chronic or cause for alarm.

“My school is a little different; children like ours have to be monitored around the clock. The monitoring starts at the gate, and if we are not on top of them with the monitoring, that could easily happen to us,” Brown said.

“I don’t have that kind of problem. I might have one or two students who are hiding away from classes,” he noted.

Brown argued that while a small number of his students are being absent from their classes, the majority are doing so for good reasons.

“It is not that they are hiding from classes; they find themselves in love with the practical areas, so they stay in those areas longer than they should, so they miss other classes because they are engaged in practical,” the principal explained.

“I have some students who I know will make it in the practical areas, so I allow them to do so; it is not a chronic problem for us,” he added.