Cab­i­net's de­ci­sion on Thurs­day to ap­prove the ex­pen­di­ture of $90.7 mil­lion over three years to hire 500 spe­cialised staff to ad­dress be­hav­iour­al is­sues among school­child­ren is a step in the right di­rec­tion and is long over­due.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Tim Gopeesingh's an­nounce­ment of the de­ci­sion to re­cruit clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gists and to add to the min­istry's ex­ist­ing so­cial work­ers and stu­dent coun­sel­lors is a wel­come at­tempt by the ed­u­ca­tion­al au­thor­i­ties to deal with the many stu­dents who en­ter pri­ma­ry schools with deep emo­tion­al is­sues, learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties or vi­sion and hear­ing prob­lems.

If the ex­pen­di­ture of $30 mil­lion a year for three years helps schools make ear­ly di­ag­noses of be­hav­iour­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal prob­lems, fol­lowed by quick and de­ci­sive in­ter­ven­tions to re­solve or treat those prob­lems, it will be mon­ey well spent.At an­oth­er lev­el, the re­cruit­ment of trained pro­fes­sion­als has the abil­i­ty to im­prove the ped­a­gog­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment with­in the school sys­tem as it's long been known that not every­one can learn in the same way or at the same pace.

As a re­sult of lim­it­ed staff, lack of fa­cil­i­ties, di­ag­nos­tic ca­pa­bil­i­ty, spe­cial­ist teach­ers and equip­ment, schools in T&T have had to adopt an ap­proach to ed­u­ca­tion in which knowl­edge is trans­mit­ted in a one-syl­labus-fits-all man­ner.

The Gov­ern­ment now ap­pears to be tak­ing a holis­tic ap­proach in pro­vid­ing spe­cial­ists and fa­cil­i­ties to deal with a wide range of hand­i­caps and psy­cho­log­i­cal is­sues. Some of those re­gard­ed as prob­lem chil­dren are not un­will­ing to learn, but un­able to do so by con­ven­tion­al meth­ods, and some of the be­hav­iour­al is­sues they present arise from this un­der­ly­ing is­sue.

Hope­ful­ly, the in­fu­sion of new pro­fes­sion­als in­to the school sys­tem will al­so lead to greater at­ten­tion be­ing placed on the needs of the in­di­vid­ual stu­dent, so that each child who en­ters the for­mal school sys­tem will be able to live up to his or her fullest po­ten­tial–whether that po­ten­tial is to be a sci­en­tist, a pro­gram­mer, a welder or a jour­nal­ist.

Cater­ing for all of these is­sues and ad­dress­ing the chal­lenges should make learn­ing a more pleas­ant ex­pe­ri­ence for these and oth­er chil­dren and may al­so re­solve or re­duce oth­er chal­lenges faced by the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.But un­der­ly­ing Dr Gopeesingh's con­cern about the need to im­prove the di­ag­nos­tic and coun­selling abil­i­ties of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion's stu­dent sup­port ser­vices must be the clear link be­tween ed­u­ca­tion­al fail­ure and the growth of crim­i­nal gangs in high-crime ar­eas.

These gangs re­cruit trou­bled teenagers–who may have been sus­pend­ed, ex­pelled or flunked out of the school sys­tem–in­to a life of crime.The up­surge in crime and es­pe­cial­ly in mur­der in the two decades or so is a func­tion of the fail­ure of the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem to ad­dress the emo­tion­al, psy­cho­log­i­cal, be­hav­iour­al and eth­i­cal needs of chil­dren–and some­times of their par­ents.

In a re­al sense, then, the $90 mil­lion that the Gov­ern­ment is spend­ing may avoid the ex­pen­di­ture of $900 mil­lion on new prison fa­cil­i­ties in the next five years or may cause a re­duc­tion in the $9 bil­lion that the Gov­ern­ment will spend on se­cu­ri­ty and law en­force­ment in the next two years.