Akash Sama­roo

Par­ents of stu­dents at the Siparia West Sec­ondary School are threat­en­ing to keep their chil­dren at home as vi­o­lence con­tin­ues at the in­sti­tu­tion.

But the Min­istries of Ed­u­ca­tion and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty are seek­ing to break that trend.

Au­thor­i­ties are mov­ing to im­ple­ment more strin­gent mea­sures dur­ing break and lunchtime pa­trols, Guardian Me­dia was told yes­ter­day.

Last Thurs­day, two fights broke out on the school com­pound. In one in­ci­dent, a stu­dent was stamped on re­peat­ed­ly by a group of boys, while in an­oth­er, a Form Four stu­dent was at­tacked and sought to fend off the boys us­ing what ap­peared to be a knife.

Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly yes­ter­day con­firmed that one stu­dent re­quired med­ical at­ten­tion but was dis­charged fair­ly quick­ly from the in­sti­tu­tion.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that six stu­dents have since been sus­pend­ed for a week.

It’s be­com­ing the un­for­tu­nate norm at the school.

In fact, there are sev­er­al on­line videos that show stu­dents bru­tal­is­ing and ex­tort­ing each oth­er.

There is a his­to­ry of dis­rup­tive be­hav­iour at the school.

For­mer prin­ci­pal Son­ny­lal Sookoo was sus­pend­ed in 2017 fol­low­ing an al­ter­ca­tion with a stu­dent. He was lat­er re­in­stat­ed.

And in 2019, then Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia sought to in­ter­vene af­ter iden­ti­fy­ing the is­sues at the school.

A re­port blamed a break­down of school sys­tems, a lack of lead­er­ship, poor stu­dent at­ten­dance and a 25 per cent dai­ly teacher ab­sen­teeism rate.

Three years lat­er, the new Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter is now ask­ing for a re­port on the “sub­stance and re­sults of any in­ter­ven­tions made at this spe­cif­ic school.”

Gads­by-Dol­ly ad­mit­ted that while school so­cial work­ers as­sist with de­fus­ing sit­u­a­tions of vi­o­lence, in some cas­es, more strin­gent mea­sures may be re­quired.

This is wel­come news for the par­ents, as it ap­pears that the on­ly thing that gave the school a respite from the vi­o­lence and ag­gres­sion was the forced clo­sure of the in­sti­tu­tions due to COVID-19.

This is be­cause on Feb­ru­ary 7 when face-to-face learn­ing restart­ed, the vi­o­lence re­sumed as if the stu­dents’ rou­tine was nev­er bro­ken.

A screen grab at a fight at the Siparia West Secondary School.

“On the first day of his ro­ta­tion, five boys ap­proached my son and told him he had to pay them in or­der to be in the school.He had 25 dol­lars which I gave him that morn­ing, he spent $4 and they took the oth­er $21,” a par­ent told Guardian Me­dia un­der the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty.

That par­ent said their son was ex­cit­ed to start the school term, as he had not set foot in school since he passed the SEA ex­am.

“He is fear­ful now, he has asked if he could stay home but the min­istry has stopped that. He has on­ly gone to school phys­i­cal­ly for one day be­cause he didn’t want to go back to be bul­lied for his mon­ey. I don’t want to force him to go but what else can I do?” the par­ent al­so said.

An­oth­er con­cerned par­ent said it seems as if the trou­ble mak­ers have un­of­fi­cial im­mu­ni­ty at the school.

“There isn’t prop­er se­cu­ri­ty, but even with their pres­ence, they them­selves are afraid of the stu­dents. Teach­ers are say­ing it is not their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to look af­ter the kids all day, which I do un­der­stand but they have to re­mem­ber we are send­ing our chil­dren there un­der the con­di­tion that they will be safe,” that par­ent said.

The par­ents shared a text mes­sage from a teacher at the school who said there is very lit­tle they can do.

“I know you all are wor­ried about the sit­u­a­tion, I will not tell you to send your child to school or keep them home, the de­ci­sion is yours but there is on­ly so much the staff can do. You think they would be afraid to in­jure a teacher, but they are not,” the mes­sage said.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to one for­mer school mem­ber who al­so asked that his iden­ti­ty be with­held.

He said, “It’s very hard to get these chil­dren to learn and be­have, the chil­dren they send to that school, about 90 per cent are chil­dren who scored be­tween 0 to 30 in ex­ams.”

The for­mer ed­u­ca­tor said there are al­so many cas­es where the stu­dents en­ter Form One at the age of 16.

He told Guardian Me­dia sev­er­al things were at­tempt­ed to chan­nel the stu­dents’ en­er­gy in­to some­thing pro­duc­tive.

“We tried to play lit­tle games in class, even tak­ing them to the field so they could be more ac­tive but it’s very dif­fi­cult to do that with them, noth­ing we tried work,” he said.

But Gads­by-Dol­ly is hop­ing to find a so­lu­tion. For now, some short-term mea­sures are be­ing put in place.

“More strin­gent break and lunchtime pa­trols will be im­ple­ment­ed and the school al­so has a close re­la­tion­ship with the com­mu­ni­ty po­lice,” she said.

But the min­is­ter added that par­ents must al­so re­mind stu­dents of ex­pect­ed be­hav­iour and re­spect for oth­ers.

“Their role can­not be over­looked,” she said.