Thank you for the opportunity to share. I believe that we need to address urgently the situation where too many of  our school children, in the mornings, are missing deliberately the assigned school buses, wasting much valuable time at bus stops, in the bus terminals, or just “chilling out” somewhere. After a certain time, some of them don’t even bother to go to school. Some strong message needs to be sent to our children, and indeed to us parents as well!

Parents, members of the Royal Barbados Police Force, school attendance officers, Principals and staff, the Minister and Ministry of Education all need to work in tandem to arrest this growing menace. Let’s not wait for it to get out of hand or become the norm for our children.

Also, many of our children, it seems, are not duty-bound to attend school once exams are concluded, and so we see children (and many of them unsupervised) having at times as many as two weeks at their disposal. With teachers having to correct papers, write up and submit reports, etc., could we not get some individuals or community groups to organize daily sessions to keep our children engaged in positive and constructive activities and behavior?

The old adage is ever true: “the devil finds work for idle hands” and, “a child left to himself will bring his mother to shame.”

Yours sincerely,

James Millar