Gail Alexan­der

A draft plan to deal with vi­o­lence in schools, en­ti­tled a ‘Na­tion­al School In­frac­tion Rubric’, is be­ing pre­pared for dis­cus­sions with stake­hold­ers be­fore be­ing sent to Cab­i­net for con­sid­er­a­tion and ap­proval be­fore im­ple­men­ta­tion.

Act­ing Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Lisa Mor­ris Julien con­firmed this in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, while eply­ing to Op­po­si­tion MP Rudy In­dars­ingh’s queries on mea­sures to ad­dress school vi­o­lence.

Mor­ris Julien said the min­istry recog­nis­es the need to im­ple­ment ef­fec­tive, wide-rang­ing so­lu­tions to­ward re­duc­ing vi­o­lence in schools.

She said, “To this end, the min­istry has col­lect­ed and analysed da­ta on school in­dis­ci­pline and vi­o­lence and has iden­ti­fied schools of fo­cus for tar­get­ed in­ter­ven­tion, that is, schools with the high­est rates of school vi­o­lence, as well as those ex­hibit­ing the fol­low­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics:

• High per­cent­age of Form 1 stu­dents who scored un­der 30 per cent in SEA;

• High lev­els of in­dis­ci­pline;

• High ab­sen­teeism; and

• Low lev­els of CSEC achieve­ment.

She said the min­istry has al­so col­lab­o­rat­ed and met with the fol­low­ing min­istries/agen­cies over the last sev­er­al months to de­vise a ‘Na­tion­al School In­frac­tion Rubric’ - Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty; Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice; Gen­der and Child Af­fairs; TTPS Com­mu­ni­ty Po­lice; So­cial De­vel­op­ment, To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly and Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment.

“Aris­ing from these dis­cus­sions, three mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary teams were es­tab­lished, each fo­cus­ing on School Dis­ci­pline Ma­trix, Pos­i­tive Re­in­force­ment and Cri­te­ria for High Risk Schools.”

Mor­ris Julien said an ini­tial re­port on these is­sues is due by the end of April 2022.

“Fol­low­ing the re­ceipt of this ini­tial re­port, a draft Na­tion­al School In­frac­tion Rubric will be dis­cussed with stake­hold­ers and sent to Cab­i­net for con­sid­er­a­tion and ap­proval be­fore im­ple­men­ta­tion,” she said.

“It is ex­pect­ed that the fi­nal In­frac­tion Rubric, along with the in­puts from the Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion, will re­sult in pos­i­tive out­comes with re­spect to stu­dent be­hav­iour.”

Mor­ris Julien didn’t have in­for­ma­tion at hand on whether the Po­lice Ser­vice has been sent in­to sec­ondary schools to as­sist in curb­ing school vi­o­lence.

On an­oth­er query re­gard­ing the de­stroy­ing of ex­pired COVID-19 vac­cines, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said to date, Pfiz­er In­cor­po­rat­ed has ap­proved the de­struc­tion of its ex­pired stock. He said the process of de­struc­tion for both the Pfiz­er and As­traZeneca vac­cines will start in one month and will be done through in­cin­er­a­tion.

Deyals­ingh said vac­cines are be­ing held in the cen­tral repos­i­to­ry in chillers and all have phys­i­cal and cam­era se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems.

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