Dennis Minott | Jamaica is courting an educational depression – and the clock is ticking

The Gleaner’s recent editorial on restoring education ought to trouble every Jamaican who claims to care about the country’s future. The attendance figures it reports are not merely disappointing; they are structurally dangerous.

When nearly one-third of children in parts of western Jamaica are absent from school, and when even relatively less-damaged regions are recording absenteeism of one in five students, we are no longer dealing with a temporary disruption. We are staring at the early contours of what may fairly be called an Educational Depression.

Depressions are not defined by drama alone, but by duration, normalisation, and institutional inertia. What makes the current moment particularly perilous is not the hurricane, nor COVID-19 in isolation, but the quiet risk that chronic absence becomes socially tolerated, administratively managed, and politically deprioritised. Once that happens, the damage compounds silently over decades.

Education systems do not collapse overnight. They thin out. They fray at the edges. They lose the habit of insistence.

ATTENDANCE IS NOT THE DISEASE

The editorial correctly observes that damaged infrastructure alone cannot explain the figures. Region 2, including Portland, has not experienced the scale of physical devastation seen elsewhere, yet attendance remains unacceptably low. That tells us something vital: this is not merely a facilities problem. It is a problem of household stress, disrupted routines, economic pressure, and weakened belief that schooling is immediately useful or reliably protective.

In particular, the reported gender skew – with boys disproportionately absent because they are “helping out” or earning – should ring alarm bells. History is unambiguous on this point: when adolescent boys detach from schooling for extended periods, re-entry rates collapse. Temporary labour hardens into permanent exit. The nation then pays later in reduced productivity, higher remediation costs, and social instability.

Attendance figures, therefore, are not simply administrative statistics. They are early-warning indicators of long-term national risk, Dana and Damion.

RESTORE ROUTINE AT ANY COST

In times of crisis, routine is a public good. Children return to school not because classrooms are perfect but because attendance is expected, supported, and socially reinforced.

Urgent action must, therefore, focus less on ideal reform and more on restoring the habit of schooling. This means

• Flexible timetabling in affected regions, including late starts or split sessions where transport or family duties are barriers.

• Short-term “attendance amnesties” that encourage return without punishment or stigma for extended absence.

• Aggressive re-enrolment drives led not only by schools, but by churches, community groups, youth clubs, and sports organisations.

The system must send one clear signal: returning matters more than explaining why you left.

BRING SCHOOL TO THE COMMUNITY

The editorial noted that guidance counsellors are being deployed into communities. This is commendable but insufficient in scale. What is required is a temporary, decentralised model of educational presence.

Pop-up learning centres in churches, community halls, and libraries can serve as transitional bridges for students who have lost confidence or routine. These need not deliver full curricula. Their purpose is simpler: to reanchor children in learning space, learning time, and adult expectation.

Alongside this, schools should be authorised – even encouraged – to operate mobile outreach teams that include a teacher, a counsellor, and a respected community figure. Their task is not enforcement but persuasion and reassurance.

This approach is neither novel nor radical. It has been used successfully in post-disaster contexts across the Global South. What it requires is administrative permission and modest resourcing – not grand new policy.

ACKNOWLEDGE ECONOMIC REALITY

We cannot scold families out of poverty. If children are absent because households are rebuilding, hungry, or financially strained, moral exhortation will fail.

Targeted, time-bound incentives tied to attendance must therefore be placed back on the table. These may include transport stipends, meal guarantees, or conditional cash support for the most affected households. Such measures are not giveaways; they are investments in human capital continuity.

The cost of modest support today is trivial compared to the long-term fiscal burden of a partially educated generation.

LITERACY AND NUMERACY

Re-entry alone is not enough. Students returning after months of absence are often overwhelmed, embarrassed, and academically adrift. If their first weeks back are marked by failure, they will disappear again.

Every region should, therefore, implement intensive remedial blocks in literacy and numeracy, especially in Grades 1–7. These need not be elaborate. Well-structured, teacher-supported catch-up programmes, delivered consistently, can restore confidence quickly.

What matters most is that students experience early success upon return. Confidence precedes persistence.

DATA MUST DRIVE ACTION

The ministry is reportedly tracking attendance. This information should not remain internal. Weekly regional attendance summaries should be published openly, alongside brief explanations of interventions under way.

Transparency does three things: it sharpens administrative focus, enables community accountability, and signals national seriousness. Silence, by contrast, breeds resignation.

Finally, Jamaica requires a short, sustained national campaign that frames attendance as a shared civic responsibility. Not a scolding campaign. A unifying one.

Children must hear, repeatedly, that school is where the country is rebuilding itself. Parents must hear that returning children to school is an act of national recovery. Employers must be reminded that child labour – even informal – undermines future workforce strength.

This is the moment for educational triage.

The danger of the present moment is not what is lost this year but what quietly fails to form over the next thirty. Literacy delayed becomes literacy denied. Absence tolerated becomes absence normalised. And educational depression, once entrenched, does not lift easily.

Jamaica has weathered storms before – meteorological and economic alike. What has always saved us is an insistence, sometimes stubborn, that education remains non-negotiable even when everything else is negotiable.

The figures in The Gleaner editorial tell us that insistence is wobbling.

The response must be swift, humane, flexible, and unembarrassed by urgency. The alternative is not merely a weaker school system, but a weakened republic.

The clock is not on our side. Selah! But it has not yet run out

Dennis A. Minott, PhD, is a physicist, green energy consultant, and long-time college counsellor. He is the CEO of A-QuEST. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.