BREAKING BARRIERS

Nearly 140 adolescent mothers will return to school on Monday, a move executive director of the Women’s Centre of Jamaica Foundation (WCJF), Novlette Howell, said reflects a shifting attitude towards the reintegration of teenage mothers into the classroom.

“The notion where our girls are not getting into institutions, it’s a thing of the past,” she told The Gleaner.

“Most of our girls do very well, and I attribute that to the counselling component of the programme. And as a result, at the end of the tenure with us, they would have been doing very well academically,” she said.

A total 139 students from across the WCJF’s seven main centres and 11 outreach stations across the island will be returning to the formal school system this academic year.

The WCJF, established in 1978, is aimed at assisting pregnant teenagers to continue their secondary education.

Under the programme, girls who have dropped out of school due to pregnancy are allowed to continue their education at the Women’s Centre nearest to them for at least one term and are subsequently returned to the formal school after the birth of their babies.

However, Howell, who has headed the WCJF since 2023, said the reinstatement of these teenage mothers into the school system has not always been simple.

“It really took rigorous [efforts to create] awareness from the Government,” she said.

She pointed to the launch of the national integration policy, launched in 2013 by the Ministry of Education to stop permanent exclusions and set guidelines for teen mothers to return to school

The policy was further updated in 2018 and made it mandatory for adolescent mothers to return to the education system after the birth of their babies.

The policy ensured the automatic referral of all pregnant girls to the WCJF, reintegration of all adolescent mothers into the formal school system, either in their former school or in another school at the same level and the monitoring of adolescent mothers to ensure that they complete their education.

Prior to this policy, the WCJF was responsible for negotiating spaces with schools.

“It really took some prodding and building the partnerships with the principals more so, and because our girls have been doing so well in the school, they recognised and appreciated the efforts made and so came on board,” Howell said.

“It took a little while, but we are now at this stage,” she said.

Emphasising that most of the girls who return to the formal school system do well, she pointed to a case two years ago, where one of the adolescent mothers became head girl for a prominent high school.

She credited their academic performance to the psychological support the centres provide for the girls.

“Our counsellors monitor these young ladies; we do sometimes keep their babies cause each of our centres has a nursery. And another support that we offer is parenting curriculum, we do have a parenting curriculum and we would teach these young girls basic principles (on how to parent).

She said psychological support is also extended to the girls’ parents.

Howell also disclosed that the WCJF also offers financial support to the girls to continue their educational journey.

In preparation for the upcoming school year, she said $500,000 has been spent to assist girls with uniforms, shoes and books, and tuition.

“Most of our girls are from the rural spaces and homes that are broken, and mommy and daddy can’t afford it, and so we have to help them with bus fare especially,” she said.

sashana.small@gleanerjm.com