Kellits High School in Clarendon Jamaica is among several educational institutions struggling with the growing trend of girls dropping out because of underage pregnancy. Over the past two years, 20 girls have quit the rural school to become mothers, which has become a major concern for the school administration as they seek to implement strategies to stem the problem. Like other schools across Jamaica faced with this challenge, they are also working with the Ministry of Education to institute a number of initiatives, including reintegrating the girls after the child is born and adding to the curriculum programmes focusing on the pitfalls of teenage pregnancy. But the school administration believes that unless the social challenges that the girls face in the parish are addressed, their efforts will be for naught and more and more girls will be caught in the same trap. Poverty and hardship, they said, have forced many of the students to work or hustle for survival, with some girls turning to older men for financial assistance, which in turn lead to an undesired compromise. In fact, within the first three months of this school year, 11 girls were forced to leave the High School because of pregnancy, adding to the nine who dropped out for the same reason last year.
