Cuba With Little Food or Electricity = School Absenteeism
HAVANA TIMES – In Cuba, more and more children and teenagers are skipping school due to the lack of breakfast, clothing, or snacks. The economic crisis has turned the simple act of sending kids to school into a daily struggle for many families.
“Sometimes I don’t even have bread to give them,” confesses a mother raising four children on her own. Speaking with El Toque, the woman, who lives in Old Havana, explained that at times she doesn’t send the children to school because she has no snacks for them.
Social media and independent media outlets are filled with similar testimonies and complaints. However, there is no official data on school absenteeism rates in the country. A search by this newsroom through state media publications also yielded no references to a possible rise in classroom absences or its link to Cuba’s social crisis.
SCHOOL ABSENTEEISM AND THE FOOD CRISIS
According to data from the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights, 78% of the island’s population have had to reduce their daily food intake due to scarcity and low wages. Food insecurity has also contributed to a rise in deaths from malnutrition, which increased by 74% between 2022 and 2023.
Although it is unknown whether some of those who died were children, international organizations have raised concerns about the nutritional deficiencies faced by Cuban youth. In 2024, UNICEF included Cuba for the first time in its global report on child food poverty. The authors noted that the diet of many Cuban children is deficient due to economic hardship, limited nutritional options, and a lack of essential services. According to the report, only a small portion of children have access to basic foods such as fruits, vegetables, or proteins.
UNICEF estimated that 9% of children consume only two of the eight necessary food groups. However, organizations like the Food Monitor Program (FMP) and the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights warn that the situation may be even more dire. FMP has flagged widespread undernourishment and “hidden hunger.”
Statements from mothers and families with children indicate that the socioeconomic situation and limited access to food directly affect school attendance. “I try to send them something for lunch, whatever I can, but if there’s no gas, what am I supposed to do?” says another mother from East Havana, whose twin children are in middle school. “Not to mention the bad nights due to blackouts, mosquitoes… Do you think I’m going to wake them at six when they’ve slept only three hours?”
A DETERIORATING EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM
In addition to hardship, absenteeism is also linked to the crumbling educational system. For the 2024–2025 school year, authorities reported a 12.5% shortage of teachers. Education Minister Naima Trujillo Barreto acknowledged it would be a difficult year and said that 24,000 teachers were needed to fill the gap.
Power outages have also forced schools in several provinces to shorten their hours. In Villa Clara, for example, to cope with daily blackouts exceeding 12 hours, schools in May 2024 rescheduled their days: keeping the same start time but limiting classes to two blocks—10:00–12:00 and 14:00–16:20.
In March 2025—after the fourth collapse of the National Electric System in six months, which left the entire country in the dark for days—students in Pinar del Río, Artemisa, and Mayabeque returned to school a day later than the rest of the country due to the continuing instability of the power supply in those areas.
Yadiuska Domínguez, a resident of Maisi in Guantánamo province, told Marti Noticias that many children are not going to school “because of the hardship” they are facing. She added: “There’s no bread for breakfast or snacks.” In Güines, Delanis Alvarez said her daughter missed three consecutive days for lack of a snack: “Not everyone can afford to buy bread every day for 350 or 400 pesos (around $1 USD). And that’s just the basics.”
School meals—meant to offer relief—are far from providing a balanced diet: they’re high in carbohydrates and lack proteins, fruits, and vegetables. Moreover, 90% of primary schools lack access to potable water, according to Food Monitor Program.
Prolonged absenteeism often turns into permanent dropout. At the beginning of 2025, Minister of Labor and Social Security Marta Elena Feito admitted that many young people drop out to work and help at home. The outlook is worse for those living in peripheral areas, especially in rural zones. In 2021, data from the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI) confirmed that 30% of girls who left school came from such areas.
Meanwhile, the Observatory of Academic Freedom estimates that 39% of students who complete middle school do not continue their education. “It’s frustrating,” says teacher Alicia Lopez Hernandez, who has watched students leave school for lack of shoes or because they need to work to eat. “It used to be isolated cases, now they’re multiplying,” she wrote.
“To attend a Cuban school today, you need financial resources that are hard to come by given the dramatic economic and social situation faced by the vast majority… The hardship is also seen in the classrooms like never before: students with no shoes to go to school, no coats, no pants.”
According to the official report submitted by the Cuban government to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, there were 21,738 dropouts in the country’s educational institutions during the 2022–2023 academic year.
However, those figures have been questioned by independent organizations and academic Omara Ruiz Urquiola noted how the government uses different systems to report dropout rates depending on the institution.
“There’s a deliberate effort to hide the reality,” said Ruiz. “But on the ground, you find a high dropout rate—not necessarily in enrollment, but actual dropout—due to life’s hardships in Cuba, extreme poverty levels, especially in rural areas.”
First published in Spanish by El Toque and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.