An­na-Lisa Paul

New­ly-in­stalled Na­tion­al Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) pres­i­dent Kevin David says there is an ur­gent need for par­ents to be­come more in­volved in their chil­dren’s lives.

Iden­ti­fy­ing this as a crit­i­cal area which needs to be ad­dressed as part of the ef­fort to erad­i­cate school vi­o­lence on Tues­day, David said, “We have seen some of the videos and I must ad­mit as an or­gan­i­sa­tion, we are dis­turbed by the ac­tions of our chil­dren.”

Un­der­scor­ing the rel­e­vance of the NPTA in this fight, he added, “We must ad­dress these is­sues as par­ents be­cause they re­flect poor­ly on us as a so­ci­ety.”

Asked how the NPTA planned to start ad­dress­ing this sit­u­a­tion, David said it will be­gin with them “putting their house in or­der.”

“First­ly, we will need to en­sure our mem­ber­ship is quite clear of their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties be­cause some­where along the line, the ball was dropped.”

Point­ing out that a school’s PTA is there to sup­port par­ents and their chil­dren—and not raise funds for the school, he added, “There is crit­i­cal fo­cus to be placed on the de­vel­op­ment of our par­ents and our chil­dren. The train­ing that was pro­vid­ed by the or­gan­i­sa­tion in the past will have to be start­ed again.”

Pledg­ing to work with all stake­hold­ers to get school vi­o­lence un­der con­trol, David said the train­ing for par­ents will in­clude how they con­duct them­selves in pub­lic and guid­ance in terms of speak­ing to their kids and dis­ci­pline.

He ap­pealed to par­ents to, “com­mu­ni­cate with their chil­dren. Talk to them. Find out what is go­ing on.”

He said many times, the pub­lic will look at the re­ac­tions of some chil­dren and as­sume they are bad and come from homes with var­i­ous chal­lenges – when in re­al­i­ty, some stu­dents come from good homes.

“But it is just that when they come to­geth­er as friends, some­how or the oth­er, one per­son is able to in­flu­ence the group and we see what oc­curred re­cent­ly, so we want to tell our par­ents, con­tin­ue to talk to your chil­dren. En­sure there is an open re­la­tion­ship where they can com­mu­ni­cate with you and check their bags be­fore they go to school, en­sure they are not car­ry­ing any weapons to school.”

The NPTA met with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and the Spe­cial Com­mit­tee on School Vi­o­lence on Mon­day.