Why change the rules for some?

It will be great if the Ministry of Education can provide some comparative data for the last five years so we can ascertain the trend in a more scientific way.

Also, the ministry should break up this information by school type to show if there are any differences. I am quite sure that there will be differences.

That is, some types of schools will have a higher attendance percentage than others. And this is where the difference is between a good performing school and a not so good performing school. Also, there should be discussions with all the relevant stakeholders before a decision is made on the suggestion to give the entire Carnival week off and make up for it in the July/August vacation period.

On the face of it, this may seem a reasonable argument.

However, it does not solve the problem of the responsibility or lack thereof of students and parents to get the students to school on Ash Wednesday and the rest of this week.

Students and parents must know that after frolicking, they must get back to business, which is school in this case, right after.

In the real world of work which they are preparing themselves for, this is required, especially in the private sector.

Then, will it be fair for a school that has good attendance on Ash Wednesday and the rest of the Carnival week to suffer at the hands of those schools that have poor attendance by shifting the dates of the school term? Why should the teachers’ vacation period be adjusted because students do not go to school? The students must know the consequences of lapsed behaviour.

Why should rules be made to accommodate those who deviate from them rather than having everybody conform to them? This is intrinsically linked to the wider societal problem of deviance and crime that we are still grappling with.

Kevin Ram via emai