EDUCATION Minister Mr Andrew Holness tells us that 1,000 fewer students are sitting the Grade Six Achievement Test (GSAT) each year.

What is truly depressing is that the education ministry doesn’t know why. They are unclear as to whether the reduced number is the result of the declining birth rate, an increasing incidence of children staying away from school, or possibly a combination of both.

We are told in yesterday’s Sunday Observer that 48,200 students sat the exam this past March. In 2009, the candidates numbered 49,700 and in 2008 the number stood at 48,733. The 2007 figure was 51,000 while that for 2006 was 51,204.

It is testimony to the inherent problems of underdeveloped societies such as Jamaica that after several years of such an important trend, the experts remain in the dark.

Given that level of ignorance, the education minister should perhaps think twice about the statement attributed to him last week that parents who neglect to send their children to school should be arrested and charged.

There is obviously a need for more focused research and enquiry into issues of education such as school attendance and the GSAT. The additional data can only help as the society struggles to resolve illiteracy, for example.

It is all well and good for the minister to point to welfare relief such as the PATH programme in insisting that parents have no excuse for keeping their children from school. But the harsh truth is that such relief simply does not stretch far enough. The anecdotal evidence is that for those in the poorest circumstances, schooling can easily become of very low priority.

For the poorest, the need for everyone, including children, to hustle by whatever means — even anti-social and criminal — in order to feed, clothe and shelter family members can conceivably become of far greater importance. Such are the realities with which many Jamaicans live — a fact about which the minister as member of parliament for a few of our more depressed urban ‘corners’ would be well aware.

Of course, entrenched poverty is also a reality for many of those who faithfully insist that their children attend school, day in, day out. It is something that our best and most proactive teachers bear in mind as they creatively raise funds and resources, sometimes in hostile circumstances, for breakfast programmes and other assistance for children most in need.

As school resumes today with hundreds of thousands of children coming out after the long Summer break, this newspaper finds it useful to remind Jamaicans of the tremendous role our teachers play, not just as educators but as social workers.

We know there are bad teachers — misfits in the system. But for the most part our chronically underpaid teachers are selfless, wholehearted professionals committed to the education and welfare of their young charges even in our most crime-infested and depressed communities.

For them, praise can never be too strong.