THE government is to make another attempt at implementing compulsory education, this time with punitive measures, but not initially, education and youth minister Maxine Henry-Wilson announced Wednesday.

Compulsory education was introduced in some parishes in 1982.

That programme targeted primary schools which experienced chronic levels of absenteeism, low weekly attendance rate, poor Friday attendance, high levels of illiteracy, and low levels of pupil achievement, the minister advised Parliament during her contribution to the sectoral debate.

A factor against learning, the minister said, was the inconsistency of attendance by many students.

Current statistics show that the national attendance rate was 78 per cent, but the figure did not tell the whole story, she said, as there were schools in remote rural areas with attendance levels below 50 per cent.

The 2006 report from the National Council on Education (NCE), the statutory body set up to give advice to the minister, indicates that the average monthly attendance continues to range between 54 per cent and 70 per cent as most of the recovered cases reverted to absenteeism and had to be redeemed repeatedly.

“While we sympathize with parents,” Henry-Wilson said, “as an administration, we fully recognise that education is the only true and sustainable antidote to poverty,” said Henry-Wilson.

“If we are genuinely committed to ensuring that there is generational advancement in terms of improved quality of life, then we have to find ways and means to alleviate some of the negative factors.”

The NCE has done a preliminary analysis of the requirements to fully introduce compulsory education, and the recommendations are being studied prior to a Cabinet submission.

“I do not propose to use punitive measures as the first rung of action,” Henry-Wilson said.

“However, parents have to be held accountable for the attendance of children at school.”

The recommendations to be presented to Cabinet would speak to a combination of an army of social workers who could do community and home visits and interventions, accessing welfare programmes and improving home-school collaboration, she said.

Jamaicans will be kept abreast of the Cabinet’s decision “as the re-introduction of this policy will require massive public education,” said Henry-Wilson.

Also, speaking to plans for a smooth start to the new school year which begins on September 4, Henry Wilson said 12 schools would be expanded by then, providing 2,300 news spaces, and four more schools, providing 600 spaces, would come on stream later.