SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

For the chil­dren of T&T, 2o18 has been a year of aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess­es, as well as on­go­ing chal­lenges with abuse of ne­glect. Here are some of the key events that af­fect­ed the coun­try’s youngest cit­i­zens.

SEA Break­through—When the re­sults for the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am were re­leased, a boy placed first, break­ing a sev­en-year streak by the na­tion’s girls. Saiesh Ram­per­sad, who at­tend­ed the Gand­hi Memo­r­i­al Vedic School in Aranguez, San Juan, scored a per­fect 100 per cent in the ex­am and earned a place in his first choice school, Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, Ch­agua­nas.

Al­though de­throned, the girls were not kept out of the top SEA rank­ings as the sec­ond place went to Ja­da Ram­nath, al­so from Gand­hi Memo­r­i­al. Class­mates Re­bekah Ma­coon and Kav­el Pereri­ra, of the Ch­agua­nas Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry school, tied for third.

CAPE Schol­ars—T&T stu­dents ex­celled in the Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am­i­na­tions (CAPE), cop­ping var­i­ous awards for their ex­cel­lence at the Re­gion­al Top Awards cer­e­mo­ny 1n De­cem­ber 6 in the St Vin­cent and the Grenadines. Awardees were Mikhaili Toney, Kirese Nar­i­nesingh, Se­line Sun­dar and Jade Lakhan.

Toney, a Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do, stu­dent was the most Out­stand­ing Can­di­date in Hu­man­i­ties, with ten grade ones in Caribbean Stud­ies, Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Stud­ies, En­tre­pre­neur­ship Units 1 and 2, En­vi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence Units 1 and 2, Ge­og­ra­phy Units 1 and 2 and So­ci­ol­o­gy Units 1 and 2. He re­ceived the Hod­der Ed­u­ca­tion CAPE Hu­man­i­ties award.

Nar­i­nesingh, a Na­pari­ma Girls’ Col­lege stu­dent, was the most Out­stand­ing Can­di­date in Lan­guage Stud­ies, achiev­ing grade ones in eight units—French Units 1 and 2, Caribbean Stud­ies, Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Stud­ies, Lit­er­a­tures in Eng­lish 1 and 2 and Span­ish Units 1 and 2.

Sun­dar scored eight grade obes, con­tin­u­ing the Lak­sh­mi Girls’ Hin­du Col­lege lega­cy of dom­i­nance in re­gion­al busi­ness awards, with top grades in Ac­count­ing Units 1 and 2, Caribbean Stud­ies, Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Stud­ies, Eco­nom­ics Units 1 and 2 and Man­age­ment of Busi­ness Units 1 and 2. She was award­ed the AC­CA CXC Busi­ness Stud­ies Award 2018.

Lakhan scored eight grade ones and was the most Out­stand­ing Can­di­date in En­vi­ron­men­tal Stud­ies. The St Joseph’s Con­vent, Port of Spain stu­dent wrote Bi­ol­o­gy Units 1 and 2, Caribbean Stud­ies, En­vi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence Units 1 and 2 and Ge­og­ra­phy Units 1 and 2.

Chal­lenges in Ed­u­ca­tion—In his end of year mes­sage, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia not­ed the ills fac­ing the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem but said al­though the sec­tor has been shak­en, it has not been held down.

He said: “In this past year we were shak­en by many un­fore­seen chal­lenges that posed threats to our stu­dents’ abil­i­ty in some cas­es to at­tend class­es or have ac­cess to the qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion that the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion is com­mit­ted to de­liv­er­ing but with the sup­port of stake­hold­ers like the Na­tion­al Par­ent Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA), Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA), the De­nom­i­na­tion­al Boards of Man­age­ment and Prin­ci­pals As­so­ci­a­tions we have been shak­en but have nev­er been held down. We have been able to strate­gi­cal­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly en­sure that our stu­dents are in re­ceipt of a qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion no mat­ter the cir­cum­stance.

Gar­cia said teach­ers and prin­ci­pals found in­no­v­a­tive ways to ed­u­cate stu­dents, even in the face of nat­ur­al dis­as­ters.

“It has not all been smooth sail­ing or easy for us, this year two nat­ur­al dis­as­ters af­fect­ed a num­ber of our schools caus­ing staff and stu­dents to be dis­placed in some in­stances but we re­mained re­silient. Teach­ers, prin­ci­pals and par­ents found in­no­v­a­tive ways to en­sure cur­ricu­lum de­liv­ery while the Min­istry worked to re­turn the schools to a state of nor­mal­cy and we will con­tin­ue to work to have all our stu­dents re­turn to com­fort­able spaces for cur­ricu­lum de­liv­ery,” he said.

Abuse and ne­glect—While chil­dren may have over­come ad­ver­si­ties in school to suc­ceed, many more of the na­tion’s young­sters suf­fered ter­ri­ble abuse at the hands of the ones charged with their care.

In one of the most heart-wrench­ing cas­es of 2018, a 14-year-old spe­cial needs boy was res­cued by the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty af­ter rel­a­tives post­ed a video of his liv­ing con­di­tions and bruis­es on his body on so­cial me­dia, beg­ging for the au­thor­i­ty to in­ter­vene.

The boy was made to sleep in an open room with ducks and oth­er live­stock in the room next to him and beat­en con­stant­ly and at the time of his res­cue, he had a four inch gash on his hand that a rel­a­tive con­fessed she caused with a knife.

Af­ter be­ing re­moved from the home, the child was put in the care of a fe­male rel­a­tive but he is cur­rent­ly in the care of the au­thor­i­ty.

Cit­i­zens are al­so mak­ing bet­ter use of so­cial me­dia to ex­pose abuse and help save the lives of the na­tion’s youth through ac­tivism and rais­ing aware­ness.

Ear­li­er in De­cem­ber, Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty chair­man Han­iff Ben­jamin could not say how many peo­ple had been charged as a re­sult of the in­ves­ti­ga­tions done by the agency as the po­lice were re­spon­si­ble for that as­pect of the cas­es. How­ev­er, he as­sured that the agency con­tin­ues to con­duct sen­si­ti­sa­tion in schools on chil­dren’s rights and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

Wor­ry­ing sta­tis­tics—Over the past three years, an av­er­age of 398 cas­es of child abuse were re­port­ed to the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty per month with 4,091 cas­es re­port­ed be­tween Jan­u­ary and Oc­to­ber

In to­tal, over the last three years the agency re­ceived 16,661 re­ports of abuse, with 56.3 per cent of the vic­tims iden­ti­fied as fe­male, 41.9 per cent iden­ti­fied as male and in 1.8 per cent of the cas­es the vic­tims’ gen­der was un­known.

Of the more 16,000 vic­tims, the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty re­ports that 3.1 per cent were un­der one year old, 10.5 per cent were be­tween the ages of one to three, 13.6 per cent be­tween the ages of four to six and 5.5 per cent were be­tween the ages of sev­en to nine. The ten to 13-year-old age group ac­count­ed for the ma­jor­i­ty of the vic­tims, how­ev­er,—22.7 per cent, or close to 4,000 chil­dren.

The 14 to 15-year-old age brack­et was the sec­ond high­est, with 17.9 per cent of the vic­tims, while the 16 to 17-year-ol­da ac­count­ed for 14 per cent of vic­tims.

The ages of 2.4 per cent of the re­port­ed vic­tims were not known.

In terms of ge­o­graph­i­cal lo­ca­tions, the high­est num­ber of re­port­ed cas­es came from San Juan/Laven­tille with 2158 re­port­ed cas­es. Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co was the sec­ond high­est, with 2124 re­port­ed cas­es, while To­ba­go and Ma­yaro/Rio Claro had the least num­ber of re­ports, with each dis­trict ac­count­ing for 2.4 per cent of cas­es or ap­prox­i­mate­ly 400 chil­dren.

Ac­cord­ing to the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty, in 2015, sex­u­al abuse ac­count­ed for 33.6 per cent of re­port­ed cas­es, 37.3 per cent of the cas­es re­port­ed in 2016 and 33.9 per cent in 2017.

Re­port­ed cas­es of ne­glect in­creased steadi­ly, from 34.7 per cent in 2015 to 36.4 per cent in 2016 and 45.2 per cent in 2017. Phys­i­cal abuse was the least re­port­ed type of abuse, ac­count for 21.8 per cent of the cas­es re­port­ed in 2015 and 23.4 per cent in 2016 and 2017.

Girls make up the ma­jor­i­ty of vic­tims of sex­u­al abuse—a stag­ger­ing 84.5 per cent in 2015, 84.3 per cent in 2016 and 80.6 per cent in 2017.

How­ev­er, in cas­es of re­port­ed ne­glect, boys were the more af­fect­ed gen­der. In 2015, 51.8 per cent of the vic­tims of ne­glect were boys, while 48.2 per cent were girls. In 2016, 54.8 per cent were boys and 45.2 per cent were girls. In 2017, boys once again made up the ma­jor­i­ty of re­port­ed cas­es of ne­glect, with 55 per cent of the vic­tims be­ing male while 45 per cent were fe­male.

In cas­es of phys­i­cal abuse, 48.1 per cent of the vic­tims were fe­male in 2015, 47.7 per cent in 2016 and 49.7 per cent in 2017. Male vic­tims ac­count­ed for 51.9 per cent of vic­tims in 2015, 52.3 per cent in 2016 and 49.7 per cent in 2017.

Ac­cord­ing to the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty, the al­leged per­pe­tra­tors of abuse in 24.9 per cent of the case was the child’s moth­er. In 13.4 per cent of cas­es, the abuser was the fa­ther, while 10.9 per cent in­volved “some­one known to the child.”