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Saturday, July 12, 2025

Dottin: ‘We need more social services options to deal with deviant kids’

by

GUARDIAN MEDIA NEWSROOM
16 days ago
20250626
Pastor Clive Dottin during his interview on CNC3’s The Morning Brew show, on Thursday 26 June 2025.

Pastor Clive Dottin during his interview on CNC3’s The Morning Brew show, on Thursday 26 June 2025.

Com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist Pas­tor Clive Dot­tin is ad­vo­cat­ing for more so­cial ser­vices in­ter­ven­tions to help deal with stu­dents who dis­play de­viant be­hav­iour.

A guest on to­day’s edi­tion of CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew show, Pas­tor Dot­tin agreed that such stu­dents should be held legal­ly re­spon­si­ble for their ac­tions. He al­so main­tains that par­ents al­so should be held to ac­count for their chil­dren's be­hav­iour.

His com­ments come af­ter five fe­male stu­dents were charged in con­nec­tion with the as­sault of a stu­dent of Holy Faith Con­vent in Cou­va.

Ac­cord­ing to Pas­tor Dot­tin, while the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry pro­vides some so­cial sup­port ser­vices, the need for these have in­creased tremen­dous­ly over the years.

“Look at the is­sue strength­en­ing the Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices [Unit],” he ad­vis­es the new ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter. “When that start­ed, you might have had 5,000 chil­dren be­ing sus­pend­ed. Now, you have 21,000 chil­dren be­ing sus­pend­ed and I don’t see any struc­ture any­where to deal with that num­ber of peo­ple ef­fec­tive­ly."

Re­cent­ly, a group of fe­male stu­dents of the South-East Port-of-Spain Sec­ondary School was sus­pend­ed af­ter bru­tal­ly at­tack­ing an­oth­er stu­dent. How­ev­er, no crim­i­nal charges have been laid against them.

Fol­low­ing that in­ci­dent, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said stu­dents caught as­sault­ing oth­er stu­dents, teach­ers and prin­ci­pals will be ex­pelled, and stu­dents caught in videos cheer­ing and egging on the vi­o­lence will be sus­pend­ed.

The PM al­so urged all prin­ci­pals, teach­ers and stu­dents to make re­ports to the po­lice.


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