Chetwood Memorial Primary Tackles Absenteeism

Chetwood Memorial Primary School in St. James will be rolling out a new programme during the 2025/2026 academic year to reduce absenteeism and keep children in school.

“If I see a child hasn’t turned up to school for three days and the parents have not reached out to us, we’re going to call,” said Principal of the institution, Garvin Atkinson, in an interview with JIS News.

“If we don’t hear anything, I’m going to send the guidance counsellors, who… are social workers, into the community to find our children, because our children need to be in school. If you don’t have them, you can’t educate them,” he said, underscoring the importance of regular attendance in ensuring student success.

Mr. Atkinson urged parents to ensure that their children attend school every day regardless of their financial circumstances.

“Send the children to school. We’ll give them breakfast; we’ll give them lunch,” he said.

Highlighting other imperatives of the new academic year, the Principal said the Administration will continue to prioritise literacy with targeted interventions to ensure that every child who leaves the institution is able to read.

He noted that the school does a thorough evaluation of the results of the readiness test that all students are required to complete in grade one “to see where they are, then we put programmes in place”.

He informed that there is a special class for pupils who are functioning “way below pre-primary levels” in literacy and numeracy. The class size is capped at 25 students. There are also “pull-out sessions” where students receive individual support.

Mr. Atkinson highlighted the value of the intervention.

“If they tackle the problem from the early primary, then when they transition to grades four, five and six, you won’t have that problem,” he pointed out, noting that he  has made a request to the Ministry of Education, Skills, Youth and Information for three more teachers to address literacy challenges.

With a literacy rate of 89 per cent and numeracy rate of 91 per cent, the school’s efforts are bearing positive results.