RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

More than 21,000 school sus­pen­sions were record­ed be­tween 2022 and 2025, prompt­ing High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad to call for ur­gent re­form in how the na­tion ad­dress­es school vi­o­lence and stu­dent be­hav­iour.

In his ad­dress at the 2025 grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny of Dayanand Memo­r­i­al Vedic School on Fri­day, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad de­scribed the sta­tis­tics as “alarm­ing,” not­ing that they point to deep­er is­sues with­in homes and com­mu­ni­ties.

“It was re­vealed this week that over the last three years, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 21,661 school chil­dren were sus­pend­ed. This is alarm­ing. It sug­gests that we have to ex­am­ine our col­lec­tive be­hav­iour and crit­i­cal changes ur­gent­ly are re­quired,” he said.

He warned that stu­dents are mir­ror­ing dys­func­tion­al fam­i­ly be­hav­iour, adding, “It takes a vil­lage to raise a child and the sta­tis­tics demon­strate that too many fam­i­lies in our Re­pub­lic are dys­func­tion­al as chil­dren mir­ror the be­hav­iour that they see.”

Seep­er­sad urged stu­dents to be alert as they tran­si­tion to sec­ondary school.

“Sad­ly, our schools are not as safe as they once were and as you en­ter sec­ondary school, you have to adopt a mind set that you will not be a vic­tim. You will need to be vig­i­lant and you must re­ject and re­port any form of bul­ly­ing.”

He al­so ad­dressed on­line con­duct, ad­vis­ing stu­dents to think be­fore they post.

“Cre­ate and utilise safe on­line spaces and pause be­fore you post. Al­ways re­flect on whether you would want your grand­par­ents, par­ents, or teach­ers to come across the ma­te­r­i­al which you in­tend to up­load on­to the World Wide Web and if know that you would not want them to see it, do not post it,” he ad­vised.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad al­so ex­plained the le­gal frame­work sur­round­ing stu­dent mis­con­duct.

“In most mod­ern so­ci­eties, chil­dren are shield­ed from the full con­se­quences of the law when they com­mit cer­tain ac­tions. In very sim­ple terms, the law recog­nis­es that chil­dren un­der the age of sev­en are ‘Doli In­ca­pax’. This just means that chil­dren un­der that age are in­ca­pable of form­ing crim­i­nal in­tent.”

He said while chil­dren be­tween 7 and 14 can some­times be held legal­ly ir­re­spon­si­ble, those be­tween 14 and 18 are not af­ford­ed the same pro­tec­tion.

“A fo­cused, mea­sured, and ma­ture ap­proach is there­fore need­ed to en­sure that cul­pa­ble chil­dren are si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly held to ac­count and re­ha­bil­i­tat­ed.

“Those who are un­able to form the req­ui­site crim­i­nal in­tent should be placed in su­per­vised spaces where they can be af­ford­ed the emo­tion­al, phys­i­o­log­i­cal, and fi­nan­cial sup­port which they re­quire to course cor­rect,” he ex­plained.

Al­so ad­dress­ing the stu­dents, Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe pledged to im­prove school in­fra­struc­ture, promis­ing “we will con­tin­ue to make your school en­vi­ron­ment more com­fort­able.” He al­so urged par­ents to pay at­ten­tion to their chil­dren’s well-be­ing.

“Look out for your chil­dren,” he said, high­light­ing the min­istry’s fo­cus on tack­ling child­hood obe­si­ty.

“You are mov­ing in the right di­rec­tion in terms of deal­ing with ex­er­cise and child­hood obe­si­ty, which is some­thing that we at the Min­istry of Health are tak­ing a very keen in­ter­est in.”

Bo­doe re­mind­ed stu­dents that many de­ci­sions lie ahead, in­clud­ing how they use tech­nol­o­gy. Hold­ing up a phone, he said, “This thing here can ei­ther make you or it can break you… use it for the right rea­son. It can as­sist you, it can help you. But al­so, if you use it in the wrong way, it can take you down.”