Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has re­ceived a pre­lim­i­nary re­port in­to the vi­o­lent in­ci­dent in­volv­ing stu­dents of Ch­agua­nas South Sec­ondary School, in which a stu­dent was beat­en and re­port­ed­ly knocked un­con­scious by a group of boys ear­li­er this week in Ch­agua­nas.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath said the school has al­ready en­gaged law en­force­ment au­thor­i­ties and ini­ti­at­ed dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ceed­ings against the stu­dents in­volved.

Dowlath in­di­cat­ed that the mat­ter is now be­fore the po­lice.

“I am ad­vised that the school has for­mal­ly en­gaged the Ch­agua­nas Com­mu­ni­ty Po­lice and the mat­ter is there­fore be­fore the po­lice for the at­ten­tion and in­ves­ti­ga­tion,” he stat­ed.

The min­is­ter said the school has al­so be­gun its in­ter­nal dis­ci­pli­nary process in keep­ing with the min­istry’s poli­cies and the Na­tion­al School Code of Con­duct.

“Writ­ten state­ments have been ob­tained from the stu­dents in­volved and from eye­wit­ness­es, and the par­ents of the stu­dents in­volved have been con­tact­ed for a con­fer­ence at the school,” Dowlath said.

“The school has al­so been di­rect­ed to con­vene dis­ci­pli­nary hear­ings in ac­cor­dance with the Min­istry’s poli­cies and Na­tion­al School Code of Con­duct, fol­low­ing which ap­pro­pri­ate dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion will be tak­en.”

Dowlath stressed that the min­istry main­tains a “ze­ro-tol­er­ance ap­proach” to se­ri­ous acts of vi­o­lence and threats to stu­dent safe­ty.

He said the Po­lice in Schools Pro­gramme re­mains ac­tive in 51 high-risk sec­ondary schools and is sup­port­ed by ad­di­tion­al po­lice pa­trols and in­ter-agency col­lab­o­ra­tion where nec­es­sary.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter, the Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion con­tin­ues to pro­vide coun­selling, be­hav­iour­al in­ter­ven­tions, psy­choso­cial sup­port, con­flict res­o­lu­tion as­sis­tance and re­fer­rals for at-risk stu­dents.

Mean­while, for­mer ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly de­scribed the in­ci­dent as “dis­tress­ing” and warned that puni­tive mea­sures alone would not ad­dress the deep­er is­sues fu­elling school vi­o­lence.

Speak­ing with re­porters out­side Par­lia­ment, Gads­by-Dol­ly said while im­me­di­ate dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion may pro­vide short-term re­lief, broad­er so­cial in­ter­ven­tions are need­ed.

“In­creased sus­pen­sions and ex­pul­sions, those may be very, very short-term an­swers, and they help more the peo­ple that are in the school be­cause the fact is you can’t have a school with a lot of vi­o­lent chil­dren and noth­ing is be­ing done to re­move them from the en­vi­ron­ment be­cause they do af­fect those who are try­ing,” she said.

Gads­by-Dol­ly said it was crit­i­cal to ad­dress un­der­ly­ing fac­tors that con­tribute to school vi­o­lence and in­dis­ci­pline.

“But that doesn’t go to the root of the prob­lem. While it might be a short-term fix, it re­al­ly doesn’t help, and so you have to do the oth­er things that are in­volved to ad­dress the root prob­lem.”

Gads­by-Dol­ly not­ed that school vi­o­lence has been a long­stand­ing is­sue, dat­ing back decades and said sus­tained, co­or­di­nat­ed in­ter­ven­tions are nec­es­sary.

She ex­pressed con­cern that sev­er­al pro­grammes and sup­port sys­tems in­tro­duced to as­sist stu­dents have not been re­newed.

The for­mer min­is­ter al­so linked ris­ing frus­tra­tion among stu­dents to eco­nom­ic hard­ships fac­ing fam­i­lies.

“We have over 50,000 peo­ple be­ing sent home. That has caused a lot of prob­lems with­in the home. Stu­dents are an­gry, frus­trat­ed; they don’t have what they need to come to school,” she said.

Gads­by-Dol­ly ar­gued that ad­dress­ing school vi­o­lence re­quires a mul­ti­fac­eted na­tion­al re­sponse in­volv­ing the Min­istries of Ed­u­ca­tion, Youth De­vel­op­ment and So­cial De­vel­op­ment.