KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

While videos of school vi­o­lence con­tin­ue to go vi­ral on so­cial me­dia apps, Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly says in­ci­dents are now de­clin­ing at 17 schools iden­ti­fied with school in­dis­ci­pline prob­lems.

Speak­ing to re­porters at the open­ing of the re­cent­ly re­built Fan­ny Vil­lage Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School on Mon­day, Gads­by-Dol­ly said the in­ter­ven­tion of com­mu­ni­ty po­lice at those schools in Trinidad was bear­ing fruit.

Fol­low­ing fre­quent re­ports and so­cial me­dia posts of vi­o­lence at sev­er­al sec­ondary schools, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion part­nered with the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice to im­ple­ment pa­trols out­side spec­i­fied schools and their sur­round­ings to de­ter stu­dents from vi­o­lent out­bursts. It was among sev­er­al mea­sures tak­en last April, with Gads­by-Dol­ly first re­port­ing an im­pact weeks lat­er.

“We are glad for that po­lice in­volve­ment, so it must con­tin­ue be­cause clear­ly, it is bear­ing fruit. It is not just the po­lice pres­ence be­ing a puni­tive pres­ence. It is the com­mu­ni­ty po­lice who are in­volved in the Po­lice Youth Clubs. They are en­gag­ing the stu­dents, speak­ing to them and en­cour­ag­ing them to join the Po­lice Youth Clubs out­side school. We see that bear­ing fruit, and of course, we want that to con­tin­ue in our schools,” Gads­by-Dol­ly said.

She be­lieves us­ing mo­bile phones and so­cial me­dia in school con­tributes to the per­cep­tion that school vi­o­lence is wors­en­ing.

Last week, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion re-sent its Cell Phone in Schools Pol­i­cy to prin­ci­pals, re­mind­ing them that stu­dents must not use these de­vices out­side of ed­u­ca­tion­al pur­pos­es.

Gads­by-Dol­ly said a vi­able ca­reer in to­day’s job mar­ket is a so­cial me­dia con­tent cre­ator and it ap­peals to many stu­dents, as they like it when their videos go vi­ral.

“Out­side of the fact that there is in­dis­ci­pline in schools, which is not a new thing, that av­enue of pro­mot­ing it as some­thing good and fun, these things are fu­elled by so­cial me­dia. It is some­thing for us to con­sid­er as we move for­ward in terms of dis­ci­pline at schools: how we al­low our stu­dents to glo­ri­fy some of the acts that we know are not good things, but of course, to young peo­ple, they seem like great fun.”

The Fan­ny Vil­lage Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School was shut down in April 2015 fol­low­ing a fire on the com­pound. Stu­dents and staff re­lo­cat­ed to the Fan­ny Vil­lage Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre op­po­site the school.

Gads­by-Dol­ly said build­ing a new fa­cil­i­ty stretched to sev­en years, as there were prob­lems at the Ed­u­ca­tion Fa­cil­i­ties Com­pa­ny Ltd and with val­i­dat­ing claims made by con­trac­tors.

The min­istry spent over $37 mil­lion on the new school, which has up­grad­ed class­rooms, a mu­sic room and a li­brary among oth­er ameni­ties.

Gads­by-Dol­ly ac­knowl­edged the im­por­tance of hav­ing suit­able spaces for learn­ing, adding the Gov­ern­ment had in­vest­ed con­sid­er­able amounts of fund­ing in build­ing and re­pair­ing schools.

She said T&T has over 800 pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions in the coun­try. Many were be­tween 40-100 years old and in some cas­es, the age­ing in­fra­struc­tures are no longer re­pairable and the min­istry has to re­build.

Gads­by-Dol­ly said she re­cent­ly re­turned from a CXC con­fer­ence and learned that many oth­er coun­tries in the Caribbean face sim­i­lar is­sues.