An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly has at­trib­uted a gen­er­al de­cline in bul­ly­ing and ex­tor­tion in schools for the aca­d­e­m­ic years 2022-2023 and 2023-2024, to the ef­forts of the School In­ter­ven­tion Pro­gramme.

Re­veal­ing this as she re­spond­ed to a pri­vate mo­tion ti­tled Pro­tec­tion of Our Na­tion’s Chil­dren Against Bul­ly­ing, which was brought by Princes Town MP Bar­ry Padarath in the Low­er House yes­ter­day, the min­is­ter re­fut­ed claims the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion (MoE) had failed to ad­e­quate­ly and prop­er­ly ad­dress the is­sue.

De­fend­ing her min­istry as she out­lined what mea­sures and strate­gies had been im­ple­ment­ed in 106 fo­cus schools, she de­clared, “Far from hid­ing our heads in the sand, we have con­front­ed the is­sue.”

She said the re­vised dis­ci­pline ma­trix had been bear­ing fruit, as they had since hired 80 more so­cial work­ers and 40 ad­di­tion­al guid­ance coun­sel­lors for these schools.

Even as this in­for­ma­tion was be­ing shared in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, ru­mours swirled that the School In­ter­ven­tion Team was fac­ing pos­si­ble clo­sure.

The School In­ter­ven­tion Team is a spe­cialised unit un­der the am­bit of the Spe­cial Vic­tims De­part­ment (SVD), T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, that was es­tab­lished to ad­dress bul­ly­ing in schools.

Claim­ing bul­ly­ing was a so­ci­etal prob­lem af­fect­ing over 130 mil­lion chil­dren glob­al­ly, she said every one in three young­sters was bul­lied.

In 1988, for­mer ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter Clive Pan­tin raised the is­sue of bul­ly­ing and school vi­o­lence, which he then de­scribed as a cri­sis.

Ref­er­enc­ing this yes­ter­day, Gads­by-Dol­ly said, “It hasn’t now start­ed to be an is­sue in T&T. It was a cri­sis many years ago.”

Up­set that the Op­po­si­tion would seek to cap­i­talise on the is­sue to score po­lit­i­cal points, the min­is­ter said even though the MoE was do­ing its’ best, “Yes, there are things we can do bet­ter.”

She urged peo­ple to stop paint­ing a sce­nario in which T&T was go­ing to hell in a hand­bas­ket.

In­sist­ing school bul­lies were a small mi­nor­i­ty; she said trans­for­ma­tion­al be­hav­iour was key to chang­ing their minds and at­ti­tudes as they learnt how to han­dle anger and en­gage in con­flict res­o­lu­tion.

Gads­by-Dol­ly al­so ap­pealed to par­ents and adults to stop shar­ing videos of fights and dis­putes on so­cial me­dia, as she said im­pres­sion­able young­sters were see­ing these and mim­ic­k­ing this be­hav­iour.

She en­cour­aged peo­ple to share pos­i­tive and up­lift­ing videos in­stead and ob­serve the ef­fect this would have.