Un­ruly stu­dents will not be left idle af­ter ex­pul­sion, but will in­stead be en­rolled in the Mil­i­tary Led Aca­d­e­m­ic Train­ing (Mi­LAT) pro­gramme through a manda­to­ry pol­i­cy to cut down on in­dis­ci­pline while en­sur­ing learn­ing ob­jec­tives are met.

The pol­i­cy was an­nounced by Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at her min­istry on St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

Dr Gads­by-Dol­ly said her min­istry was com­mit­ted to not on­ly up­grad­ing the phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture of schools but al­so ini­ti­at­ing mea­sures to en­hance the aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance of stu­dents.

She re­mind­ed par­ents/guardians that stu­dent in­dis­ci­pline was a ma­jor con­cern of her min­istry and stressed that dis­rup­tive, vi­o­lent stu­dents would not be al­lowed to ham­per the learn­ing of oth­ers.

Point­ing out that school of­fi­cials were usu­al­ly hes­i­tant to ex­pel stu­dents, Gads­by-Dol­ly said, “In a lot of cas­es, prin­ci­pals may not want to go the dis­tance of the process of sus­pen­sion or ap­ply­ing for ex­tend­ed sus­pen­sion and bring­ing it to the fore so that there is a record of the be­hav­iour and what that does is that it en­cour­ages stu­dent mis­be­hav­iour, be­cause they be­lieve they can mis­be­have with­out con­se­quences.

“In a lot of cas­es, when we see stu­dents reach­ing the end point where they have to be ex­pelled, it is be­cause they feel that will nev­er hap­pen to them and so they con­tin­ue with that be­hav­iour.”

Gads­by-Dol­ly said ac­cord­ing to law, chil­dren be­low the age of 16 must be in school, which would al­low for their com­pul­so­ry en­rol­ment in­to the Mi­LAT pro­gramme. Not­ing that the manda­to­ry age of school­ing for chil­dren was up to 16 years, she said chil­dren 16 and over could still be en­rolled in the pro­gramme but that would have to be at the dis­cre­tion of their par­ents/guardians.

The Mi­LAT pro­gramme is a so­cial in­ter­ven­tion pro­gramme un­der the Min­istry of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice that is specif­i­cal­ly de­signed to help “at-risk” young men be­tween the ages of 16 and 20 years de­vel­op more pro­duc­tive be­hav­iours and at­ti­tudes. It is co-or­di­nat­ed and run by mil­i­tary of­fi­cers.

Not­ing the in­ci­dents of school vi­o­lence in re­cent times, many of which were high­light­ed on so­cial me­dia, some sec­tors of so­ci­ety have been call­ing for mea­sures out­side of ex­pul­sion to deal with un­ruly stu­dents, since ex­pul­sion takes the out of the school sys­tem for good.

Once stu­dents have been ex­pelled, they can­not ap­ply to an­oth­er gov­ern­ment or gov­ern­ment-as­sist­ed school.

Re­fer­ring to in­for­ma­tion gath­ered by her min­istry, Gads­by-Dol­ly said an­ti-so­cial be­hav­iour usu­al­ly be­gan around Form Three for sec­ondary school stu­dents, not­ing that the pro­gramme would tar­get this age co­hort specif­i­cal­ly.

“What we find, how­ev­er, many of the stu­dents we are speak­ing about are ei­ther 16 or over 16. What you tend to see in terms of the pat­tern of mis­be­hav­iour, is that it gets very strong in Form Three,” Gads­by-Dol­ly said.

“That has an im­pact on school dropouts be­cause they reach a com­pul­so­ry age and they make the de­ci­sion to leave and the state can­not force them to stay in (school).”

Gads­by-Dol­ly not­ed, how­ev­er, that this op­tion would on­ly be avail­able if the in­ter­ven­tion of the school’s sup­port sys­tems failed to bring about the re­quired changes in at­ti­tudes and be­hav­iour of chil­dren.

She al­so called on par­ents and school ad­min­is­tra­tors to do their part in en­forc­ing dis­ci­pline among way­ward stu­dents, not­ing this would pre­vent the need for fur­ther dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion.

She said once stu­dents were en­rolled in the Mi­LAT pro­gramme, the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices and the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty would al­so be no­ti­fied to of­fer as­sis­tance through coun­selling.

Gads­by-Dol­ly said her min­istry would al­so be work­ing with Ser­vol to as­sist chil­dren be­low the age of 16 in de­vel­op­ing vo­ca­tion­al skills.

Gads­by-Dol­ly al­so re­port­ed that last year, three stu­dents were ex­pelled while so far this year, ten stu­dents have been ex­pelled.

NPTA en­dors­es

MoE’s plan

The Na­tion­al Par­ent Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion is en­dors­ing the plan to send ex­pelled stu­dents to the Mi­LAT pro­gramme.

Re­cent­ly elect­ed NPTA pres­i­dent Wal­ter Stew­art told Guardian Me­dia that as part of his ex­ec­u­tive’s 16-point plan, deal­ing with de­viant be­hav­iour among school stu­dents was on the front burn­er.

He said this was why such an ini­tia­tive will be wel­comed.

He said they were very much aware of the suc­cess of the Mi­LAT pro­grammes and what it had done for many boys.

How­ev­er, he said, there was a con­cern about what would be done for the girls who al­so mis­be­have in the school sys­tem.

In her 2024 Bud­get con­tri­bu­tion, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gad­by-Dol­ly said girls had been just as guilty of bad be­hav­iour in schools as boys.

She said this was why they were look­ing at open­ing up the scope of the Mi­LAT pro­gramme.

“We are recog­nis­ing more and more that our young ladies are get­ting in­volved in the neg­a­tive be­hav­iours that for­mer­ly, there was a mul­ti­tude of young men. Our young ladies are now get­ting in­volved in that same be­hav­iour. So we are look­ing for­ward to Mi­LAT for girls,” the min­is­ter said.

Nev­er­the­less, Stew­art said, there was a meet­ing of his ex­ec­u­tive to­day and a more com­pre­hen­sive re­sponse would be pro­vid­ed on the is­sue.