Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Com­mu­ni­ty po­lice staff will be sta­tioned at schools grap­pling with out­breaks of stu­dent vi­o­lence and a re­quest has been made for pa­trols around their com­pounds and near­by en­vi­rons.

These are some of the mea­sures the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has in­sti­tut­ed to treat the surge in school-based vi­o­lence since stu­dents re­turned to class­es.

Since their re­turn to phys­i­cal school on Tues­day, videos have be­gun cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia of fights in­volv­ing sec­ondary school stu­dents na­tion­wide. While the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has con­vened an in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al com­mit­tee to re­vise the School Dis­ci­pline Ma­trix, it’s not ex­pect­ed to present its rec­om­men­da­tions un­til the end of the first week of May.

How­ev­er, in a re­lease yes­ter­day, the min­istry said sev­er­al mea­sures will be tak­en to ad­dress the prob­lem im­me­di­ate­ly, one of which in­volves po­lice pres­ence. 

“To pro­vide more im­me­di­ate sup­port to schools at the start of Term III, the Com­mu­ni­ty Po­lice, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, as­signed ded­i­cat­ed staff to each of the 15 Sec­ondary Schools where vi­o­lence in­ci­dents have been seen to be most preva­lent. These schools al­so have ded­i­cat­ed Guid­ance Coun­cil­lors and School So­cial Work­ers,” it said. 

Pend­ing the com­mit­tee’s rec­om­men­da­tions, it said the min­istry al­so for­mal­ly wrote act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc Don­ald Ja­cob for ad­vice on the pro­ce­dure for re­mov­ing vi­o­lent stu­dents from the school en­vi­ron­ment “to one which can of­fer them re­ha­bil­i­ta­tive ser­vices.”

It added: “The TTPS has al­so been asked to im­me­di­ate­ly pro­vide pa­trols di­rect­ly out­side of the schools in ques­tion, as well as in their vicin­i­ty, at the close of the school day, to de­ter stu­dents from vi­o­lent out­bursts.”

The min­istry said it will pur­sue fur­ther dis­cus­sions with the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to have of­fi­cers tem­porar­i­ly sta­tioned in the 15 iden­ti­fied prob­lem schools. 

Speak­ing on the in­ci­dence of school vi­o­lence yes­ter­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley not­ed that chil­dren need to un­der­stand that “con­se­quences flow from ac­tions.”

“I am very con­cerned about it and in fact, while I un­der­stand that it’s a new en­vi­ron­ment hav­ing been locked up home for al­most two years, com­ing out some chil­dren are re­leas­ing some neg­a­tive en­er­gies but the vi­o­lence I am see­ing is un­ac­cept­able,” he said. 

He said so­lu­tions are be­ing sought by Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly, but rein­tro­duc­ing cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment is not an op­tion on the ta­ble. 

“There’s no in­ten­tion to beat our way out of this,” he said. 

He said the par­ents of chil­dren per­pe­trat­ing these vi­o­lent acts need to be re­cruit­ed to “join in as­sess­ing their be­hav­iour and en­cour­ag­ing im­prove­ments in their con­duct.”

Na­tion­al Par­ent Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) Pres­i­dent Zena Ra­matali shared the Prime Min­is­ter’s sen­ti­ment, say­ing all stake­hold­ers need to be a part of the so­lu­tion.

“This is a time for us to come to­geth­er and as­sist our chil­dren, not leave them or send them to prison or sus­pend them to re­main at home for lengthy pe­ri­ods with­out any kind of in­ter­ven­tion. So we need that kind of...mean­ing­ful in­ter­ven­tion that will as­sist our chil­dren at this point in time,” she said. 

Pres­i­dent of the Con­cerned Par­ents’ Move­ment Clarence Men­doza agreed the pan­dem­ic is con­tribut­ing to the vi­o­lent out­bursts but said it can’t be to­tal­ly blamed. 

“We can­not keep look­ing back and blame the COVID-19 at this point in time. We must blame our­selves as adults and par­ents for not deal­ing with our chil­dren,” Men­doza said.