Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@guardian.co.tt

The sev­en St An­tho­ny’s Col­lege stu­dents who were sus­pend­ed over a fight that left one stu­dent phys­i­cal­ly in­jured have been ex­pelled. The stu­dents are al­so fac­ing pos­si­ble crim­i­nal charges in con­nec­tion with the in­ci­dent, as a po­lice probe is un­der­way.

Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer (CEO) of the Catholic Ed­u­ca­tion Board of Man­age­ment (CEBM) Sharon Man­groo said yes­ter­day that the de­ci­sion was the last op­tion, as these stu­dents had got­ten in­to trou­ble be­fore.

Man­groo said it was tak­en to en­sure the safe­ty of all stu­dents and teach­ers.

An ex­act date as to when the stu­dents were no­ti­fied of their ex­pul­sions could not be con­firmed but it is un­der­stood the de­ci­sion was tak­en just be­fore the school term con­clud­ed for the Christ­mas va­ca­tion.

“It was tak­en with a heavy heart and af­ter a lot of de­lib­er­a­tion,” Man­groo told Guardian Me­dia.

The stu­dent who was at­tacked faced no ac­tion.

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has al­so made rec­om­men­da­tions for the sus­pend­ed stu­dents to at­tend the Mil­i­tary-Led Aca­d­e­m­ic Train­ing Pro­gramme (Mi­LAT), which is the on­ly so­cial in­ter­ven­tion pro­gramme specif­i­cal­ly de­signed to help at-risk young men, aged 16-20, trans­form their lives and achieve aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, a stu­dent got in­to an al­ter­ca­tion with six oth­ers on No­vem­ber 9, and sus­tained in­juries to his face, ribs, back, and chest, as well as a bro­ken nose, af­ter he was at­tacked. Re­ports in­di­cate the vic­tim was hos­pi­talised for a swollen face, bruised ribs and bruis­es on his chest and back. A pic­ture of his in­juries sur­faced on­line.

Four Roads, Diego Mar­tin po­lice have since launched a joint in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter with the Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions De­part­ment, Com­mu­ni­ty-Ori­ent­ed Polic­ing Sec­tion and the Child Pro­tec­tion Unit.

The of­fi­cers promised to meet with the prin­ci­pal.

Se­nior Supt of the West­ern Di­vi­sion Garvin Hen­ry said yes­ter­day that the in­ves­ti­ga­tions were on­go­ing and ac­tion would be tak­en in the not too dis­tant fu­ture.

Man­groo told Guardian Me­dia that while the stu­dents were ex­pelled, oth­er mea­sures were tak­en to avoid a re­cur­rence. She said they would en­hance the re­la­tion­ship with the Na­tion­al Par­ent/Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) to en­cour­age greater parental en­gage­ment.

The CEBM will al­so seek to as­sist in im­prov­ing in-school se­cu­ri­ty through en­gag­ing tech­nol­o­gy, some pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment will be arranged for the school lead­er­ship team and they will con­tin­ue to col­lab­o­rate with the min­istry and Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion to have teach­ing and ad­min­is­tra­tive va­can­cies filled.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teacher’s As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin said the news of the stu­dents’ ex­pul­sion brought no joy to the union.

“TTUTA is not pleased when­ev­er the ac­tion has to be such as sus­pen­sion or ex­pul­sion ... we are al­ways sad­dened that chil­dren have to come out the school sys­tem,” he said.

Lum Kin said he hoped com­plete and prop­er in­ves­ti­ga­tions were done in the mat­ter.

“We are hope­ful that this isn’t a sit­u­a­tion where the MoE is look­ing to en­hance their ar­gu­ments for the in­tro­duc­tion of the Mi­LAT pro­gramme but prop­er doc­u­men­ta­tion and find­ings,” he said.

As for the stu­dents, Lum Kin said, “I would hope that it would be a learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence for the stu­dents and they will re­alise the wrong­do­ing that was per­pe­trat­ed and use it to im­prove their lives in the fu­ture.”

Al­so con­tact­ed, NPTA pres­i­dent Wal­ter Stew­art de­scribed the news as sad but con­cern­ing.

“NPTA is con­cerned about the gen­e­sis or root cause of such de­viant be­hav­iour to war­rant such ag­gres­sion by our stu­dents to cause in­jury to their peers and while we take a ze­ro tol­er­ance ap­proach to such in­dis­ci­pline, there is need to dig deep­er,” he said.

Stew­art made a fur­ther call for stake­hold­ers to get to­geth­er to re­view the cur­rent dis­ci­pline ma­trix and en­sure schools are en­forc­ing puni­tive mea­sures to stu­dents. He said there was need to look at the pri­ma­ry school sys­tem where, from an ear­ly age, em­pha­sis and manda­to­ry fo­cus should be placed on core val­ues, in­clud­ing dis­ci­pline, pro­duc­tion and tol­er­ance.

“NPTA makes a fur­ther call for the in­clu­sion of par­ents as vol­un­teers to as­sist the school ad­min­is­tra­tion and our ed­u­ca­tors in the su­per­vi­sion of our charges be­fore, dur­ing and af­ter school hours,” he said.

Stew­art la­belled the is­sue of vi­o­lence at schools as crit­i­cal and en­cour­aged all schools to fos­ter two-way com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween school and home so that par­ents feel like part­ners in the ed­u­ca­tion land­scape.

Mean­while, T&T Sec­ondary Schools Par­ent Sup­port Group founder Rachiel Ram­samooj said once all oth­er av­enues had been ex­haust­ed in terms of try­ing to re­ha­bil­i­tate the stu­dents with­in the nor­mal school sys­tem failed, then she be­lieves ex­pul­sion was the an­swer.

“How­ev­er, we must not aban­don our at­tempts to re­me­di­ate these chil­dren,” she said.

Ram­samooj added that the Mi­Lat pro­gramme should be the min­istry’s com­pul­so­ry course of ac­tion rather than a sug­gest­ed one.

“The chal­lenged stu­dents would re­quire their own de­fin­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment so that they can re­ceive the re­quired one-on-one at­ten­tion,” she said.