Points made by Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly in her ad­dress at a Na­tion­al Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) con­fer­ence last week­end should form the ba­sis for deep­er dis­cus­sion among stake­hold­ers.

She is right! Dis­rup­tive stu­dents do have “the po­ten­tial to be bet­ter” and need sup­port and guid­ance.

That brings in­to fo­cus the qual­i­ty of the in­ter­ven­tions pro­vid­ed by the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry in re­sponse to bul­ly­ing, stu­dent vi­o­lence, and the oth­er dis­rup­tive be­hav­iours that erupt in the pub­lic school sys­tem from time to time.

Are prob­lem stu­dents in T&T’s pub­lic schools get­ting sup­port to re­ha­bil­i­tate, or are they more like­ly to drop out of the sys­tem al­to­geth­er? That is the ques­tion to be an­swered by Dr Gads­by-Dol­ly, a for­mer sec­ondary school teacher who, to her cred­it, did not side­step one of the biggest prob­lems fac­ing her min­istry.

She ac­knowl­edged that there has been an in­crease in crime and dys­func­tion­al be­hav­iour but said some of those dis­rup­tive stu­dents dis­played qual­i­ties that could make them ef­fec­tive lead­ers if they were giv­en prop­er guid­ance. She was ap­plaud­ed when she said, “Imag­ine if we redi­rect­ed those qual­i­ties to­ward pos­i­tive ac­tions. This is what we must recog­nise in each child—the po­ten­tial for im­prove­ment.”

The min­is­ter was in the right fo­rum when she made the point that par­ents, teach­ers, and the wider com­mu­ni­ty play vi­tal roles in shap­ing pos­i­tive be­hav­iours.

In­deed, be­hav­iour­al is­sues in chil­dren stem from prob­lems at home and in the com­mu­ni­ty. There­fore, the min­is­ter was prob­a­bly preach­ing to the choir when she de­clared, “No teacher or prin­ci­pal can do what a par­ent should be do­ing.”

How­ev­er, the is­sue re­quires a much deep­er ex­am­i­na­tion, in­clud­ing a re­view of the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry’s in­ter­ven­tions, such as the ca­pac­i­ty of the Stu­dents Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion to ef­fec­tive­ly deal with trou­bled stu­dents.

There are still a few weeks left in this cur­rent school term in which bul­ly­ing, and school fights have at­tract­ed na­tion­al at­ten­tion and con­cern. Those types of dis­rup­tive be­hav­iours usu­al­ly re­sult in de­creased teach­ing time, so the wider school pop­u­la­tion, not just the vic­tims and per­pe­tra­tors, are af­fect­ed.

As im­por­tant as it is to iden­ti­fy the root caus­es of dis­rup­tive be­hav­iour, which can range from bore­dom and at­ten­tion-seek­ing to learn­ing dif­fi­cul­ties and men­tal health chal­lenges, there al­so needs to be more fo­cus on how these in­ci­dents are han­dled.

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, han­dling dis­rup­tive be­hav­iour is a pro­gres­sion that in­cludes de­ten­tion or sus­pen­sion and even­tu­al­ly ex­pul­sion. This method, wide­ly re­gard­ed as the best way to re­move trou­ble­mak­ers from the class­room, of­fers very lit­tle by way of re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion to stu­dents who need ed­u­ca­tion the most — the dis­rup­tive ones.

They are more like­ly to fall through the cracks and end up as dropouts rather than get the help they need to im­prove their be­hav­iour to even­tu­al­ly re­turn to the class­room. Whether or not that was her in­tent, Min­is­ter Gads­by-Dol­ly has start­ed a con­ver­sa­tion that should now shift to the range of in­ter­ven­tions that ex­ist to pre­vent and re­spond to dis­rup­tive be­hav­iour in T&T’s schools.

This is an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­plore more ef­fec­tive, com­pre­hen­sive in­ter­ven­tions, such as school-based psy­choso­cial pre­ven­tion pro­grammes and restora­tive meth­ods.

A more en­light­ened ap­proach that does not fur­ther strain the al­ready stretched Stu­dents Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion and re­quires more parental in­volve­ment and com­mu­ni­ty sup­port is the way to ad­dress this prob­lem.