21% of students missing from Maxfield Park Primary
Published:Monday | March 7, 2022 | 12:09 AMAinsworth Morris/Staff Reporter
During the return of full face-to-face classes today, Tracey Ann Holloway Richards will not be surprised if 100 fewer students than the number originally enrolled will turn up at Maxfield Park Primary School in Kingston.
On Jamaica Day, which was nationally celebrated on February 25, Holloway Richards, the principal, and colleague educators urged students to appear for an all-day concert in recognition of the annual cultural event.
That entreaty was expected to be a litmus test to inform projections of a full engagement in in-person learning following the midterm break in March. The principal reported that 106 students were missing that day.
At midday, which was the climax of the concert, around 397 students had reported for school, which formally started at 8 a.m.
The coronavirus pandemic has had a punishing effect on education in Jamaica, with schools shuttered for the majority of the 24 months since the disease was designated a pandemic. The upshot of the crisis has been falling learning outcomes, exacerbated by the reliance on computers and Internet connectivity, which left tens of thousands of students in limbo.
Holloway Richards said that Maxfield Park Primary’s pre-pandemic population stood at 503 students. Since then, 397 have returned for face-to-face classes, representing 79 per cent of the original number.
Of the absent 106, eight were students preparing for the upcoming Primary Exit Profile (PEP) examinations.
Holloway Richards said that Maxfield Park administrators theorise that some of the absent students have either relocated or their parents simply cannot afford the financial cost of sending them to face-to-face classes.
“Parents are without jobs for different reasons; some parents are not able to find the money. Some of the parents cannot find the ... lunch money to send them back to school,” she said in a Gleaner interview.
“”I’m hoping to God that by the end of April, we will be able get back at least 80 per cent of those students,” Holloway Richards said of the absentees.
The school has tried making contact with some parents through calls or WhatsApp messages, but many of those attempts have been fruitless because of changed phone numbers and other challenges.
Holloway Richards said since the recent phased reopening of face-to-face classes at her school, she has had to be reregistering children more than halfway into the academic year.
“On Friday morning, a child came in for the first since September of last year. This child is in grade five, so we have students that are out there [and] parents, who, for various reasons, they have decided not to send their children back to school, and it’s really, really causing a problem because the longer these children stay out of the classroom, it’s going to be detrimental to teaching and learning, not just only at Maxfield Park Primary School, but our island of Jamaica,” the principal said.