Noticeably absent in the preliminary reports of the Population and Housing Census 2011 is the status of education in the island.

The census report, conducted in 2011 by the Statistical Institute of Jamaica (STATIN), was released during a press conference yesterday.

According to Dr Valerie Nam, director of censuses, demograhics and social statistics at STATIN, the data on the education category will be completed by December.

Nam said the area was more complex compared to some of the others and it takes more time to analyse.

"In education, the questions are complex. Once you decide you are going in and ask for information, we have to establish what it is that we want from the topic. In education, we want levels of education, we want exams, and we make account for the answer you are likely to give, which is not necessarily the answer we are looking for," she explained.

She added: "For instance, we want the formal education that puts us at primary, secondary or tertiary level, and you might give us a commercial college, so we have to go back and ask the relevant questions to get to the level that you were at before."

DATA NEEDS CLEANING

She said in addition, some of the data collected has errors and so the cleaning of the education data will take more time.

Nam said the overall cleaning of the census data would result in additional information in other areas, but there would be no changes to the information that is already published.

She said the time would be extended to the end of the year due to a lack human resources.

"I have to say by December because we don't have a lot of human resources. It's like one or two of us who go through the census data at this point to identify the inconsistencies and how we need to clean and then to put out the information," said Nam.

nadisha.hunter@gleanerjm.com