More than 18 students of Mahaicony Creek were found to have dropped out of school when the Schools’ Welfare Officers from the Department of Education in Region Five took their ‘Operation Care’ campaign to the area recently.
Gillian Vyphuis, a schools’ welfare officer, told this newspaper that she and a team visited areas along the creek, between Wash Clothes (six miles from the East Coast road bridge) to Pine Ground (13 miles away). They found that children were not attending school – both at the primary and secondary level – because of the negligence of parents as well as transportation and birth certificate problems.
Some parents also related that after their children write the National Grade Six Assessment exams (NGSA) they are forced to keep them at home, especially if they pass to attend secondary schools on the coast.
Last year, a boy who wrote the NGSA exams was awarded a place at the Bygeval Secondary School on the coast, but was unable to attend because his parents did not have any place for him to stay.
His parents said that apart from the transportation cost being very expensive, it would have been very difficult for him to travel daily.
Vyphuis also pointed out that a female student who had passed to go to the Golden Grove Secondary School eventually dropped out at the third form level because of problems encountered at the place she stayed.
In one instance also, it was found that a single father who was left to care for his four children alone was unable to send them to school as he suffers from a disability as a result of a broken arm.
He is also finding it difficult to work to maintain the children as his wife has abandoned the family. He is asking the government to provide some form of assistance.
It was also found that some of the students at the three primary schools in the creek – Karamat, Esau and Jacobs and Gordon Table – do not attend on a regular basis.
Parents said that they are “afraid to send our children by river and we cannot afford fuel on a-day-to-day basis to take these children to and from school.”
They also said that the children cannot use the dam to access the school during the rainy weather.
Vyphuis told this newspaper that most of the children are willing to attend school but circumstances were preventing them from doing so.
She said, “the School’s Welfare Service cannot do anything to help the children to go out to school” and the parents are calling on the government to address these issues.
