Delinquent boys should be reintegrated into schools – UNICEF rep

Two days after the Education Ministry (MoE) had launched a new project to reintegrate teenage mothers into the school system, a representative from the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) has called for Government to also accept into schools teenage boys who may have once faced the penalties of the law.
Michelle Rodrigues, who represented UNICEF at the launch of a new database system — on Wednesday at the National Centre for Education Resource Development (NCERD) on Battery Road, Kingston Georgetown – has so voiced her opinion: “We have to think of ways of how we will reintegrate those boys too, who may be out of school for one reason or the other; how we will reintegrate both boys and girls who may have come in contact with the law.”
She has welcomed the new project, which will aid in recording the welfare issues of the education sector.
The advancement in the sector, deemed as the Schools’ Welfare Information Management System Database, was developed by Intellect Storm, with the idea of advancing the recording method of the Education System so as to make it easier

for the retrieving and storing of information.
The new database, developed over a six-month period, results from a joint effort between the Ministry of Education and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
It will allow for the easy access of information, such as suicide cases, teenage pregnancies, and irregular attendance of pupils and students from the nursery to secondary levels, among several other areas.
The MoE will have key persons who would be able to access the statistics from the system, which would be entered by specified persons within each region.
Chief Education Officer (CEO) Marcel Hutson has noted how critical it is for the proper use of a database system. “This launch speaks of the use of technology in terms of making good and wise decisions. Transformation could never take place if wise decisions are not made, and therefore we must have that mindset (wherein) we are willing to change the old ways of doing things; and as they would say, ring out the old and ring in the new,” he stated.
He went on to elaborate on the importance of the implementation of the new database system, since it is the 21st century.
It was on that note that the CEO pointed out the grave importance of data; since, according to him, it was the data collected that inspired the MoE to launch a new programme to reintegrate teenage mothers into the school system. He said the new programme may very well influence the introduction of new policies to tackle these flaws in the sector.  Rodrigues lauded the MoE on the new initiative, and encouraged consistent use of the database system. She also shared Hutson’s view that new systems should be implemented to tackle the issues that are highlighted in the database system.