The Ministry of Education, Heritage and Arts have begun working on bringing 281 school dropouts back to school.

Already 58 returned to school at the beginning of Term 3.

This was confirmed by Director Primary Education, Hema Chand, during a meeting with Vanua Levu heads of schools and managers both for primary and secondary at the Civic Centre in Labasa yesterday.

He said they had started their meetings with these primary school dropouts and their parents to make arrangements.

The initiative started in July this year.

The remaining students, he said, would return to school next year.

“This exercise will continue and this school dropout initiative has really decreased in the last five years,” he said.

He said one reason for the decrease was because of the support given by the Government through grants and free education system in place.

“Most of these students come from maybe broken families. We are trying to reach out to them and trying to motivate them to come back to school.

“Some of them are still in their primary school age, then they will go back into primary school, and if they are more than 15 years and if they want to move to technical college, then we will assist them in finding a place in a technical college.”

Mr Chand said they would continue meeting the parents and the school dropouts so that “come next year we want to bring some more back to school”.

Edited by Ranoba Baoa

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