Change of mobile numbers and home addresses are among a raft of issues giving guidance counsellors difficulty locating students who have not returned to school for face-to-face classes, the Jamaica Observer has learnt.

However, three guidance counsellors, who spoke with the newspaper on condition of anonymity and that their schools not be named, said they are collaborating with social workers as they have not given up trying to re-engage those students, although the Government’s $103-million Yard to Yard Find the Child initiative has ended.

In April the Ministry of Education and Youth had indicated that just over 32,000 students have not returned to classrooms since the full resumption of face-to-face instruction in March this year. The ministry is likely to give an update on that number this week after an Observer query.

Last week, one guidance counsellor at a high school in St Ann shared a painful experience she had with a mother and her son.

“We went to find one where the mother was hiding from us and the son was found in a yard, very dirty, basically him did deh pon the work, at a mechanic shop or under a car. He was supposed to be in grade seven at that time. I went there during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and they spoke to me,” the guidance counsellor told the Observer.

She said the mother disclosed that the boy didn’t have a birth certificate and the school had been trying to offer some assistance. She also said that after following up on the matter, the mother made no effort to get the boy back in school.

“I realised the child hasn’t come to school at all; he should be in grade eight now, which means that from grade six he would not have been attending school,” she said.

“I was saying, this child lives way up in the bushes and mommy is hiding from us, he doesn’t have a birth certificate so I think that’s one of the reasons she is not pushing to get a transfer. Another issue, too, is that this child has to pass several high schools before he reaches our school and he might have to walk some part of the way and take about three vehicles to get here,” she reasoned.

The guidance counsellor expressed unhappiness about the matter, noting that poverty, poor parenting and negligence are among the reasons that some children are not returning to school.

“I feel sad because the children are our future and currently our future is very dark. I am sad because there’s nothing much that I can do to assist him. Why is he not at school? Why was he placed so far from home? Perhaps he would have been attending school if it was closer to the community. I don’t entirely blame his mother,” she said.

Another guidance counsellor, from a school in eastern Jamaica, said there are some students who are only known by their nicknames in their communities.

“The names that are on file are not the names they are known by in the community; you can’t go and say you’re asking for a Brittny, nobody knows who that is, you have to go ask for Pinky, Shorty. We have a social worker and every week we go out and try to locate students we have not been able to find,” she explained.

Additionally, she said the contact information in the school’s system is outdated for some children, which makes it harder to find them.

“Some of the children, when you try to reach out to them, they have changed phone numbers, changed addresses, sometimes the contact information you have for them on file is obsolete, so sometimes it’s just difficult to locate them,” she said.

“When you go into the community, to places where they used to live, people would say, ‘Oh, see the cousin there,’ and when you ask, the cousin say, ‘Oh, they don’t live there any more’. During COVID-19, there has been a lot of shifting and even now we have still not got back in a complete rhythm. However, we are working actively to locate them,” she added.

A third guidance counsellor, who works at a high school in Kingston, said she had similar experiences.

“We have made contact with parents but sometimes on the [school] record what we’ve found is that some numbers have changed, so that makes it more challenging; and when parents are not coming forward to provide the school with the updated contact information, we are at a loss,” she told the Observer.

“So we would really love if parents would come to school to update their records so that information can be provided, as well as to ensure that students are in school. If they are not at the school they were assigned to before the pandemic, and [are] online, and if they were relocated elsewhere, at least the school should know what is happening, if the child migrated, or something.

“That is one of the challenges with unaccounted students — not having correct contact information; and also when we reach out to the communities, they are no longer living at the address that they gave us initially,” she said.

The guidance counsellor also said she tried to schedule a consultation with the parents of a student to see how best she could get the child back in class, but the parents did not attend.

“I needed to see the parents to know how better I could serve them but the reality is that, despite reaching out, calling and getting through to the parents, neither mother nor father showed up. And I was saying to them, if you fail to come, I am going to have to do other measures externally,” she told the Observer.

“That is when a grandparent turned up, and the child does not even live with the grandparent. It’s as if coming to school is seen as additional work. They don’t understand the whole process of child-rearing and the importance of parent and school relationships; it’s more than just sending the child to school,” she explained.

However, she said about two weeks ago she successfully enrolled another student who had been unaccounted for.

“Some would say why bother to let them come now. The child has not been in school face-to-face so it’s good for that child to come now. I’m not sure how the child will function but if she gets the notes, she should perform well. Finding the child is a requirement. What we have asked our students is that if they are in the same community, and they know their friends are there, they should tell us,” she said.