Editorial | Need deeper analysis of missing students

It is good news, as was recently reported by Education Minister Fayval Williams, that the majority (73 per cent by her estimate) of the 120,000 primary and high-school students who went missing from the education system during the suspension of face-to-face class because of the COVID-19 pandemic are back in school. This engagement is critical if Jamaica is to mitigate the learning loss of the two years of school closures so that these students do not become a lost generation.

However, Mrs Williams should, on an ongoing basis, provide fuller data, and deeper analysis thereof, for Jamaicans to have a better understanding of the trends and be assured that the problem is fully fixed rather than students merely dipping into, and out of, the school system.

For instance, when Minister Williams recently told Parliament that “we have been able to re-engage approximately 87,446 of the 120,000 students,” that was based on the average weekly attendance at school by the formerly missing cohort over the six weeks from February 14 to April 1.

In the first week covered by the assessment, February 14-18, Mrs Williams said that 41,048 students were still unaccounted for, or as we understand it, still absent from classes. Put another way, just shy of 79,000 of the missing 12,000 showed up. In the following week, absenteeism among the previously missing group fell to 25,521, which meant that over 15,500 more children attended school, or a 38 per cent decline in absenteeism, compared to the previous week’s number.

What, on the face of it, is concerning are the developments thereafter. According to Minister Williams’ parliamentary presentation, in the school week of March 14-18, the number of “unaccounted-for students” was 29,479, an increase of nearly 4,000, or nearly 16 per cent on the previous week’s figure. Further, the number rose again in the week of March 21-25 to over 32,700. It then jumped another 6,700 in the following week to 39,409.

SIMPLE AVERAGE

The education minister arrived at the number of students who were re-engaged – 87,446 – by computing a simple average of the weekly absentees and subtracting that figure (32,552) from the 120,000 whose whereabouts the school system had no information about during the pandemic.

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Minister Williams’ Data

Reporting Period No. of Missing Students

February 14-18 41, 408

February 21-25 25, 521

March 7-11 27, 160

March 14-18 29, 479

March 21-25 32, 711

March 28-April 1 39, 409

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The minister’s approach is probably a good and acceptable way of doing these things. Our worry, though, is that after the second week, as is suggested by the data used in the analysis, things appeared to head progressively south. For if our interpretation of the minister’s table is correct, there were nearly 14,000 fewer students in classes during the sixth week of the analysis than during the second.

Given the major programme to track down the ‘missing’ students and the support mechanisms outlined by the education minister to ensure their attendance, our expectation would be of a continued decline in the number of absentees. Instead, there seems to be a hard-core group, which, having re-engaged, quickly backslides. If that was indeed the case, we need to understand why as well as how the problem can be solved.

Further, with 27 per cent of the previously ‘lost’ students still seemingly out of the system, it would be useful to know if it is indeed the same cohort from the pandemic phase that continues to be absent or if there are new elements in the recent numbers. While we commend the minister’s pledge to find the ‘missing’ students, it is important that there is no preconceived notion of who exactly is ‘lost’ if the nature of the problem is changing.