The Ministry of Education and Youth has reaped success with its ‘Yard to Yard, Find the Child’ initiative, with Portfolio Minister, Hon. Fayval Williams, informing that schools have almost returned or are fully back to pre-COVID-19 levels of student attendance.

The initiative was rolled out in 2022 as a national call to action to identify, locate and re-engage students, given the pandemic’s impact on the education system.

Mrs. Williams provided the update during today’s (May 16) edition of Nationwide 90’s ‘Ask the Minister’ programme.

The Minister told Host, Nora Gay Banton, that while there is data indicating the programme’s success, “what we’re grappling with now is the high level of absenteeism”.

She said this phenomenon could lead to a loss of learning time for students because, “if you’re absent from school, even one or two days, you’re going to be missing what you should be getting”.

Consequently, Mrs. Williams appealed to parents to “make the sacrifice” in ensuring that their children are in class every day of the school week.

“I want to get the word out that Friday is a school day. It is not a day for you to be taking the children to market or to clean the house or to do all of that. If you take them away from school every Friday for the school year, they will have lost a significant percentage of school time,” the Minister stated.