By LEANDRA ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

lrolle@tribunemedia.net 

THE Ministry of Education is launching a hotline for people to report students who are not attending school.

Education Minister Glenys Hanna-Martin said although attendance rates have improved since the pandemic, some students are not on the record because they are not registered.

She said the ministry is enhancing efforts to find absent students.

“The policy is simple,” she said yesterday. “Do you see a child out there that should be in school, and you believe, and you know, and you suspect that that is a child that’s not attending school for some period of time?

“That’s an at-risk child, and so that’s the policy. Pick up the phone and call the hotline of the Ministry of Education, and we will respond. So we’re going to the next level in ensuring the attendance of the students in the classroom.”

Yesterday, the minister also gave an update on a 12-year-old boy found living alone in a car earlier this year.

She said the boy remains in the state’s custody and is attending school.

Mrs Hanna-Martin said she remains optimistic about this school term.

“We are purposeful. We are strategic. We know what our endgame is, what our goals and objectives are, and the main thing is that our children have leverage,” she said.

“And so I’m very optimistic. I believe this term will be the beginning of a very, I hope a, big improvement in what we have previously seen in education in this country. We want to unleash young people onto the world.”