THOUSANDS of schoolchildren can be seen each morning on the country’s roads as they hurry to their various schools across the island in an effort to get there before the last morning bell.
Then there are those who prefer to lag behind, carefree and oblivious of the time. And still others who prefer to take joyrides on Transport Board buses and even skip school or get there whenever they please.
According to Deputy Chief Education Officer with responsibility for schools, Joy Gittens, problems of extreme lateness and absenteeism were not as severe with primary school students as with those at secondary schools.
In fact, she said, this issue remained a great challenge for the Ministry of Education, especially now that children were able to ride the Transport Board buses for free. Gittens said on mornings secondary schoolchildren were “literally” riding the buses, but not to school.
“We are having some challenges . . . children would get on the bus at Fairchild Street and then go by the hospital and get off and walk back to town and continue like that. So that is a challenge that we are having. They are literally riding the buses,” she said.
Gittens further told the WEEKEND NATION that school attendance officers had reported that “quite a few” of the delinquents were repeat offenders.
“So it is not that it is a different set. Most of the times, it is the same culprits and that is why we have the facility of the officers going into the bus stands with the assistance of [members from] the Royal Barbados Police Force (RBPF) and then after such a time they would go out with the ministry’s van on a kind of patrol around the town area and so forth
to try to get those children to take the transportation and get to school,” said Gittens.
The education officer said in the case of students being very late, school attendance officers could “pick them up and actually take them to school. The problem is not going away. But I can’t say that it is higher,” she said.
School attendance officer with the Ministry of Education and Human Resource Development, Kenville Holder, said lateness was one which the individual schools had to deal with but his department would take a look at absenteeism. He said the function of the school attendance officer was to get the students to school “and the school would take it from there”.
Concerning absenteeism, Holder said: “What we would do is that we would go and visit the schools. Students would have to be absent for 15 days or more. Then from my visit I would do home visits and then we determine what is the reason for the absence.
“In some cases it may be financial problem and if it is, we would refer it to the welfare department to our social workers. If it is a behavioural problem we refer it to a juvenile liaison officer – which is the guidance counsellor under the guidance of the police.
“If it is a problem with not having something to eat, we refer it to the school . . . Then if we still have problems, we refer it to the Probation Department. They in turn would sort of counsel the student,” explained Holder.
He said there was a process that had to be followed with the repeat offenders. They would start out by contacting the parents of those guilty students.
“And if there is no change, then the Probation Department can take the student before the court. If the parents are having a problem and can’t deal with the child or whatever, the Probation [Department] would . . . take the child before the court. So we in the ministry can take a parent to court for not sending their child to school, but we can’t take a child to court,” he explained.
Holder said despite every effort by his department to get the problem of absenteeism under control, there would still be those who continued to stay away for no genuine reason.
“You see, because the fine [imposed by the court] is just $50. That is really not much of a deterrent really. What they then do is put them on probation and if they breach probation then they can end up in prison.”
