PRINCIPAL at Christel House Jamaica Jason Scott says he is impressed with the school’s development since its inception in 2020, amid behavioural challenges, absenteeism, and academic levels of the students who attend the institution.

Scott commented on the Dobson’s Farm, Twickenham Park, St Catherine-based school’s progress during an interview with the Jamaica Observer last Thursday.

According to Scott, who has been the school’s principal since August 2022, like most schools, one of the main challenges at the institution is behaviour management.

“Several of these children come with their attitudes and behaviours that we are trying heavily to curtail. We try to eliminate chronic absences but we tend to find that it happens nonetheless, but to a lesser extent, so we have absenteeism. But behaviour, that is a major one for us,” he said.

“Sometimes it is also affected by what’s happening in the communities. So when there is a flare up of violence, sometimes it has a direct or indirect impact on children coming up,” he added.

Additionally, Scott said the staff is tasked with balancing the different academic levels of the children.

“Many of these children come here at age five. For some of them, it is the first time in a formal school setting so teachers have to be starting from pre-kinder[garten] levels for some of these children; and at the same time too, many of them academically are good so we now end up with the challenge of balancing the children at different levels in the same classroom,” Scott stressed.

Through the global children’s charity organisation Christel House International, which is responsible for the operation of the school, there is a multi-tiered system of support to manage behaviour, and a response to intervention system which help in improving the development of the children.

“Everything we do has to be in a space where it is measurable, where we measure the effectiveness of the programmes we have. We also have parental intervention sessions and we utilise our social services team to try to ensure that, as best as possible, we are curtailing the breaches when it comes to student behaviour,” said Scott.

“We are not yet where we want to be but I think, like all schools islandwide, we still have to tackle these things on a daily basis. But, I see trajectory wise we are getting somewhere,” he added.

The institution, which accommodates students at the kindergarten level to grade four presently, serves pupils from neighbouring communities within the vicinity of St Catherine — such as McCook’s Pen and Central Village — who belong to families that are among those living below the poverty line, and offers education, transportation, meals, stationery and uniforms free of cost.