And while the project coordination unit will take the lead, it is a coordinated movement with, as we said, very many moving parts, and counterparts. Chief among those are the ministries of social services, youth and education and sports. The tallest task is reserved for the Ministry of Youth which has to find a solution for the eleven thousand primary school age children who are not in school. Add that to the 60 percent of secondary school age children who are not in high school and you've got a stew of social disorder waiting to boil over. In fact, most would argue that it has boiled over...! And that's why Youth Minister Faber says his first priority will be to deal with those eleven thousand out of school children:...
Hon. Patrick Faber
"We are proposing in the Ministry of Education to put together a program that will take up to 1500 young kids between the ages of 10 and 15 years old and to find a place for them in our education system. We are going to unveil the details of that plan a little bit later on but understand that we are not going to have as acceptable a situation where a child graduates from primary school this year and does not go on to high school because of finance. I am talking about a program that the government will find funding for. The reason why 11,000 kids are out there in our society without going to school is not only because our education system is failing them, we are failing them as a community, many of us see our young people out there not going to school and we don't do anything about it. I want to encourage to use that hotline once it is established so that we can arrest this situation."
The hotline for truant children has not yet been activated but it is proposed to be 0-800-Educate. We'll tell you when it's active.....
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