Min. of Education collects data on truant children

Classrooms across the country may be empty for the Easter break, but truancy officers get no such breaks. School Community Liaison Officers today began a house-to-house survey in the Port Loyola area of Belize City to collect vital information for the Ministry of Education to determine how best to assist needy children. Monitoring Officer, Marva Bood, says the education department continues to grapple with the problem of children missing school.

Marva Bood, Monitoring Officer

“There are problems in most of the areas. A lot of times we would visit the homes and the parents would tell us that the children don’t have any food, they don’t have any footwear and stuff like that. So that is why we are specifically doing this survey today.”

Patrick Jones

“So the parents that have problems can look forward to help from the Ministry of Education?”

Marva Bood

“Yes sir. They can call our office at 223-4386 or 223-4413 for those who really, really need assistance.”

“We will greet them the time of day, tell them good morning and explain what we are doing and most parents would ask what is the purpose of the survey, and the same thing I said before that is what we told them… It is very confidential because we will take it to our office and they will pile it up in one and we the officers will get back the results so that we can know what is going on.”

Patrick Jones

“After this will there be a follow up?”

Marva Bood

“Yes sir. When school open I guess we will do probably one week again like what we are doing right now, one week out of school we will take the officer and the warden out of school and we will do another follow up to see if the result is the same. If the same amount of children are out of school or not.”

In the first day of the exercise, Bood says they gathered data on over three hundred children. The survey will continue for the next two weeks.