- Junior Dowie/Staff Photographer
Students in class at Maths Unlimited yesterday,
Earl Moxam, Senior Gleaner Writer
A DECADE and a half after an experiment in compulsory school attendance was abandoned, the Government is considering a reintroduction of the system.
In confirming the policy review, Minister of State for Education, Noel Monteith, said a decision to go ahead would largely be contingent on "taking care of the socio-economic problems, so that we don't only put a law in place, but are in a position to enforce the law."
The main drawback to the introduction of compulsory school attendance, Senator Monteith said, was whether the money was available to properly fund it.
"If we are going to enforce it, we have to have people who are able to visit homes to ensure that children come to school, and that would involve a cost, so it is merely a problem of being able to put sufficient funds in place to ensure that we can enforce compulsory attendance," he said.
The return of compulsory attendance, according to Senator Monteith, would not be a half-measure, but would be instituted right up to the secondary level.
"It is most important at the primary level, where the basics are supposed to be set, but certainly, at the secondary level, if the attendance is not good, it will affect their examination results," he said.
The willingness of the education ministry to consider this policy shift, is in keeping with the thinking of the Jamaica Teachers' Associa-tion (JTA), which has been pointing to the high absentee rate among students. The problem is particularly prevalent among primary school students, in some urban and deep rural communities, according to Patrick Smith, senior secretary for member services at the JTA.
"Attendance is about three and a half to four days in many of these schools; and even if we place it at a maximum of four days, we are losing one-fifth of the school week," Mr. Smith, a former JTA president, told The Sunday Gleaner.
STUDENTS ARRIVING LATE
The problem of days lost, Mr. Smith said, was compounded by the frequency with which a large number of students arrive late for school. The impact was particularly bad, he explained, in those schools operating the shift system, where students already have less contact time with their teachers.
Traditionally, in deep rural communities, students most frequently missed Friday classes as they were required to assist on their parents farms or carry out certain other chores.
Now, according to Patrick Smith, the practice is not restricted to Fridays, as work patterns have changed, as a consequence of which some students are forced to miss school even on Mondays.
The support of the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party would also be guaranteed, according to the party's Spokesman on Education, Senator Anthony Johnson.
This approach, he said, had been the policy of the JLP from the 1980s, when, according to him, it was successfully implemented in six parishes, starting with St. Thomas and Trelawny.
PROGRESS REPORT
It was in September 1982 that compulsory attendance was introduced in the two pilot parishes, by then Minister of Education, Dr. Mavis Gilmore.
Giving Parliament a progress report on the programme in June, 1983, Dr. Gilmore said there had been notable improvements in attendance, in the first term, with the turnout at schools in both parishes going to as high as 85 per cent, where before the rate was less than 65 per cent.
She admitted that the attendance rate had fallen off during the second term, but remained above what obtained prior to the introduction of the programme.
That effort was, however, not sustained. UNICEF, in a 1999 report, revealed that, while almost every child in Jamaica was enrolled at primary school level from the age of six, full attendance "remains a challenge".
Financial problems and illnesses prevented 43.2 per cent and 25.5 per cent of households respectively, from sending their children to school for some period of time, the UNICEF report stated, adding that children of the poor were "over-represented among the absentee population".
Such obstacles must be overcome, if a new effort at compulsory education is to be successful, according to Senator Johnson. Furthermore, he said, there had to be an adequate number of schools and teachers "who are able to absorb the population of children it doesn't make sense making it compulsory and then you end up with classrooms with 60/70 students."
Additionally, he said, systems (such as a breakfast programme) would have to be put in place to assist children with special needs.
