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Wednesday, May 7, 2025

More disorder uncovered at Tranquillity Government

by

Anna-Lisa Paul
2058 days ago
20190918
Education Minister Anthony Garcia speaks to members of the media during his visit to the Tranquility Government Primary School yesterday.

Education Minister Anthony Garcia speaks to members of the media during his visit to the Tranquility Government Primary School yesterday.

NICOLE DRAYTON

A teacher who is al­leged to have used abu­sive lan­guage to­wards pupils of the Tran­quil­li­ty Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School has been told to stay away from the class­rooms for the rest of the week and will be served with sus­pen­sion pa­pers by the end of the week.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia vis­it­ed the school yes­ter­day and said he was “very con­cerned and very dis­turbed” by the types of re­ports and com­plaints that have sur­faced.

This comes days af­ter a se­ries of voice record­ings—al­leged to be that of a Stan­dard Five teacher— was post­ed on­line in which ver­bal threats, racist rants and dis­parag­ing com­ments were di­rect­ed to the pupils and their par­ents.

Dur­ing the im­promp­tu vis­it to the school at the cor­ner of Stan­more Av­enue and Tra­garete Road yes­ter­day, Gar­cia told the me­dia that the teacher had been re­moved from the class­room as stu­dents con­tin­ue to be coun­selled by five of­fi­cials from the Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion.

Gar­cia said the teacher would be pre­sent­ed with a Cease To Re­port let­ter by the end of this week.

How­ev­er, un­til such time, he said arrange­ments have been made for the teacher to op­er­ate from the staff room.

The in­stru­ment which would have to be is­sued by the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (TSC) would in­form the teacher of the type of ac­tion be­ing tak­en against her and the im­me­di­ate con­se­quences as fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions take place.

He ex­plained, “If that is the type of be­hav­iour that is be­ing car­ried out by a teacher which we con­sid­er to be a threat to the safe­ty of our stu­dents and the safe­ty of all those who op­er­ate in the school on a dai­ly ba­sis, we have to en­sure every­one is safe.”

Al­though the teacher was said to be present at the school yes­ter­day, Gar­cia de­nied speak­ing with her as it meant he could be ac­cused of con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Dur­ing the two-hour vis­it, Gar­cia met with the school’s prin­ci­pal and the dis­trict’s school su­per­vi­sors from whom he re­ceived trou­bling re­ports about var­i­ous is­sues af­fect­ing the school in­clud­ing the poor per­for­mance of some teach­ers; a gen­er­al lethar­gy that per­vades the school; and the ad­min­is­tra­tion of cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment to stu­dents.

Ac­com­pa­nied by the Chief Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer Har­ri­lal Seecha­ran; Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Lenore Bap­tiste-Sim­mons; Ad­vi­sor Cheryl Ann Wilkin­son and oth­er of­fi­cials, Gar­cia said he was per­plexed by re­ports that there were some mem­bers of staff who, “don’t seem to be able to con­form to the reg­u­lar stan­dards of good per­for­mance.”

He said is­sues of late com­ing, ab­sen­teeism, pri­vate lessons by teach­ers on the school’s com­pound, and the ad­min­is­ter­ing of cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment to stu­dents were chief among the prob­lems now be­ing re­port­ed at the school.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said it was clear that school of­fi­cials were not ad­her­ing to the school-based man­age­ment sys­tem that had been put in place for such is­sues to be re­port­ed.

Fol­low­ing the meet­ing, Gar­cia said, “We got from them a re­port of all the ac­tiv­i­ties at the school and that re­port has left us very con­cerned and very dis­turbed be­cause it seems to us, apart from the rants of that teacher…that there is a gen­er­al feel­ing of in­dis­ci­pline among not on­ly stu­dents but teach­ing staff.”

In­di­cat­ing he was not one to un­fair­ly chas­tise teach­ers, Gar­cia said yes­ter­day’s meet­ing had left of­fi­cials, “with a painful feel­ing in our stom­achs at what tran­spired at this school and what has been tran­spir­ing”.

He said two teach­ers were found to have breached reg­u­la­tions re­gard­ing the cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment of stu­dents and were now be­ing asked to sub­mit rea­sons why dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion should not be tak­en against them.

In Feb­ru­ary of 2001, the then Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar pi­o­neered leg­is­la­tion which led to a ban on cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment in schools.

Ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Glob­al Ini­tia­tive, “Cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment of chil­dren breach­es their fun­da­men­tal hu­man rights to re­spect for hu­man dig­ni­ty and phys­i­cal in­tegri­ty.”

Re­gard­ing the prac­tice by some teach­ers to con­duct pri­vate af­ter-school lessons on the com­pound, Gar­cia said, “This is con­trary to the reg­u­la­tions by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and even the Ed­u­ca­tion Act which pro­hibits teach­ers from charg­ing for any ser­vice that he or she is giv­ing to our stu­dents.”

In an im­me­di­ate re­sponse to this, he said they would meet with the Di­rec­tor of School Su­per­vi­sion and the School Su­per­vi­sors to, “En­sure some of these short­com­ings are cor­rect­ed as soon as pos­si­ble.”

Claim­ing the school had pre­vi­ous­ly been a shin­ing ex­am­ple to oth­er gov­ern­ment-run in­sti­tu­tions, Gar­cia said the prob­lem now lay with the school’s lead­er­ship and this had to be cor­rect­ed.

He said, “The School Su­per­vi­sor has told us that she would be mak­ing cer­tain rec­om­men­da­tions with re­spect to deal­ing with this prob­lem of poor lead­er­ship and she would have the sup­port of us.”

“Some of the things we learnt to­day has been go­ing on for some time with­out our knowl­edge,” he said.

Al­though he re­fused to say sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions could be hap­pen­ing at oth­er schools, the min­is­ter said they were hope­ful the school-based man­age­ment sys­tem had proven to be more ef­fec­tive in oth­er schools.

Asked to re­in­force the min­istry’s pol­i­cy re­gard­ing the use of cell­phones in schools, Seecha­ran con­firmed it was not be­ing ad­hered to at this par­tic­u­lar school.

He said, “There is some flex­i­bil­i­ty with­in schools for them to come up with a strat­e­gy so, in many of our sec­ondary schools, cell­phones were lodged with the ad­min­is­tra­tion dur­ing the day and col­lect­ed in the evening.”

“I am not fa­mil­iar with the spe­cif­ic pol­i­cy in this school but it seems to me, it’s a breach of the nor­mal pol­i­cy and op­er­at­ing guide­lines with­in the school to have stu­dents hav­ing cell­phones in the class­room.”

Par­ents of some of the af­fect­ed stu­dents in­di­cat­ed dis­be­lief and said they had even dis­missed their chil­dren’s con­cerns re­gard­ing the teacher’s be­hav­iour be­fore the record­ings went vi­ral.


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