Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly says par­ents must take a greater role in ad­dress­ing school bul­ly­ing while the gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to do its part.

Speak­ing at a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing in the Croisee, San Juan, on Fri­day, Gads­by-Dol­ly ad­dressed “bread and but­ter” is­sues at the min­istry and high­light­ed school bul­ly­ing.

“I want to make this state­ment and make it clear. The PNM gov­ern­ment does not and will not con­done bul­ly­ing and vi­o­lence in our schools in any form and I’m say­ing that here tonight for those of you who have chil­dren who are be­ing bul­lied and for those of you who have chil­dren that are bul­lies, and you are not mak­ing sure that they do what they have to do at home,” she said.

“I’m speak­ing to you, some of us as par­ents who are not do­ing what we have to do and ex­pect the teach­ers to do all the train­ing in the school. If you break it at home, don’t ex­pect the teach­ers to fix it. We will not con­done it.”

Gads­by-Dol­ly, who list­ed ways in which the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry sought to ad­dress bul­ly­ing, said in the last two years there have been meet­ings with the po­lice, Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty and there are plans to in­crease the num­ber of so­cial work­ers and psy­chol­o­gists in schools.

“We have to be call­ing the par­ents and some­times par­ents who are sup­posed to come in, you can’t get on to the par­ents, (their phone) num­ber change. These are some of the chal­lenges we face and I will tell you this, that we have stuck to our no-vi­o­lence pol­i­cy and what has that led to? That has led to more chil­dren be­ing re­moved from the school sys­tem at this time than ever in our sys­tem,” she said.

She added that there is a par­ent­ing cri­sis and where par­ents are “falling down” the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry must stand up.

Stu­dents re­moved from schools are placed at Ser­vol, the Mil­i­tary Led Aca­d­e­m­ic Train­ing (Mi­LAT) pro­gramme and oth­er youth cen­tred pro­grammes, Gads­by-Dol­ly said, and soon girls will be ac­com­mo­dat­ed in a fe­male ver­sion of Mi­LAT.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, the pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Coun­cil of the Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) Wal­ter Stew­art said the or­gan­i­sa­tion has been call­ing for more fund­ing at the ear­li­est stages of school­ing to pre­vent spend­ing to cor­rect er­rant be­hav­iour lat­er on.

“It is no se­cret that the Na­tion­al Coun­cil of PTA has a ze­ro tol­er­ance on bul­ly­ing, crime and in­dis­ci­pline in our schools and one of the mech­a­nisms that we have rec­om­mend­ed in the past is the fact that there needs to be a greater at­ten­tion and fo­cus on our stu­dents at the front end of the ed­u­ca­tion­al land­scape,” he said.

“In oth­er words, when the child en­ters ear­ly child­hood care and ed­u­ca­tion, we pump suf­fi­cient mon­ey in the front end dur­ing these stages of the child’s de­vel­op­men­tal life to avoid some of the mil­lions of dol­lars we spend at the back end when it is woe­ful­ly too late.”

Stew­art said the NPTA had been seek­ing meet­ings with the Chief Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer to ad­dress “fright­en­ing” in­ci­dents of vi­o­lence in schools.

Gads­by-Dol­ly said there are plans to in­crease the school­book grant re­cip­i­ents from 20,000 re­cip­i­ents and to ex­pand the school trans­porta­tion sys­tem.