welcome back to primetime news and a special welcome once again to our viewers
on onespotmedia.com we begin this evening with a prime time news special report following the
revelation from the Ministry of Education that over 120,000 students have been absent from school
for over a year we went in search of them here's what our reporter Kelesha williams found out
hidden in plain sight to some these windscreen wipers are just a nuisance and while many adults
are here children have joined in most of them have missed school since the pandemic
take this dean for example we'll call him bobby he's 13. he told us he has been cleaning
windscreens along spanish town road for over a year now from cover come on go back to school
never have no tablet no no along waterloo road we met another teen who we will call kevin he is 15.
come on
like bobby he has not attended face to face or online classes since march 2020 with no phone
tablet or laptop and his parents struggling to make ends meet he took to the streets
and he said wiping windscreens was the easiest way
for him to make quick cash feel bad come on can't get fluent again
feel sad come on see my friend feels the fears and talk today and as bad as things
are for bobby and kevin it is worse in rural communities like this one in old
harvest in katherine the people here recently got access to the internet
i don't know we're not going to any school and nobody knows we find out about team until
one resident carmen douglas told us her daughter is 15
and she has missed all of her grade nine classes
but why didn't she seek help from the school is it true then say would a pampered then what
was going to give them a tablet and you go to school and accidentally say no they never get
to eat let me try because i may have a banana fair i want tablets but shouldn't say empty when
i go to tablets warming down every warming time but then it's only picking them another pampered
she told us she lost her phone so she had to change her number and as a result she
didn't hear back from the spanish town-based school i'm going to be playing some guardians
now in june prime minister andrew holness said the government is preparing for the full resumption
of face-to-face classes this september now it's hoped that will help to get the missing students
back into the school system i'm looking at face-to-face in one form or another whether
it's going to be the blended approach or the rotational approach but i'm looking forward
in places like the united states it was estimated that 3 million students have been missing from the
system due to the pandemic the united nations children's emergency fund unicef also reported
that the longer children stay out of the school system the less likely they are to return now it's
left to be seen how the various state agencies in jamaica will intervene kalisha williams tvj news