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McDonald calls on MOE to address growing rate of school dropouts
– says many students drop out before completing high school
(Kaieteur News) – President of the Guyana Teachers’ Union (GTU) and A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) Member of Parliament (MP), Coretta McDonald has decried the aggressive rate of high school dropouts in the country.
Speaking at an APNU press conference on Friday, the GTU President highlighted the startling number of primary school graduates who fail to complete high school. She said that based on statistical data, half of the students who graduate primary school never go on to obtain their high school graduate certificates.
“We have noted that where at the national grade six level, we see over 15,000 pupils writing that examination, but when we reach to the level of CSEC, we only see a mere 7000 or 8000 graduates and then you ask the question, where are the others? Where do those students go?”
President of GTU, Coretta McDonald
The GTU President said in many cases, “the children are leaving school as early as third form or grade nine.” She noted that in most cases, the students do not drop out of school because they want to but because “they have to go out there to help their mothers; they have to go out there to make ends meet.”
According to the APNU parliamentarian, the high cost-of-living, absentee fathers, single mothers who have to struggle, poor wages, and salaries are among the underlying factors driving the high school dropout rate.
She told reporters that the GTU has made several recommendations on how the situation can be remedied.
“We’ve already put forward recommendations, and we’ve been putting forward recommendations over and over but you know what? This government feels that they can do this all alone, and in actual fact, it cannot be done alone, that is why we have opposition parties, that is why we have sectoral committees, where we put forward our ideas, and we go through issues. We agree to disagree, and we agree on policies that will move the nation forward, but this is not, this is not happening, hence the reason for all of the confusion that you are seeing here in our society, with regard to where we are with schools and school dropouts, this has always been a burning concern for us,” said McDonald.
She believes the Ministry of Education should examine the recommendations “rather than posing everywhere and cutting ribbons to commission schools…”
“These are the serious issues…coming from the level of the Guyana Teachers’ Union, [we] would have been bombarding the Ministry of Education week in, week out asking for meetings to discuss these matters…”
According to McDonald from 2020 to now, the Education Ministry seems to have reduced its truancy campaign; an operation meant to address absenteeism in schools.
“If we are to have structured and focused truancy campaigns, then we can address and seek to ensure that our young people are in school. If we are to focus on expanding from just academic institutions then we will miss opportunities to address the more critical issue of students abandoning their classrooms.”
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