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Monday, February 17, 2025

Police to be placed at problem schools

by

1032 days ago
20220421
Success Laventille Secondary School students were captured yesterday fighting at the corner of Charlotte Street and South Qay, Port-of-Spain.

Success Laventille Secondary School students were captured yesterday fighting at the corner of Charlotte Street and South Qay, Port-of-Spain.

KERWIN PIERRE

Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Com­mu­ni­ty po­lice staff will be sta­tioned at schools grap­pling with out­breaks of stu­dent vi­o­lence and a re­quest has been made for pa­trols around their com­pounds and near­by en­vi­rons.

These are some of the mea­sures the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has in­sti­tut­ed to treat the surge in school-based vi­o­lence since stu­dents re­turned to class­es.

Since their re­turn to phys­i­cal school on Tues­day, videos have be­gun cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia of fights in­volv­ing sec­ondary school stu­dents na­tion­wide. While the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has con­vened an in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al com­mit­tee to re­vise the School Dis­ci­pline Ma­trix, it’s not ex­pect­ed to present its rec­om­men­da­tions un­til the end of the first week of May.

How­ev­er, in a re­lease yes­ter­day, the min­istry said sev­er­al mea­sures will be tak­en to ad­dress the prob­lem im­me­di­ate­ly, one of which in­volves po­lice pres­ence. 

“To pro­vide more im­me­di­ate sup­port to schools at the start of Term III, the Com­mu­ni­ty Po­lice, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, as­signed ded­i­cat­ed staff to each of the 15 Sec­ondary Schools where vi­o­lence in­ci­dents have been seen to be most preva­lent. These schools al­so have ded­i­cat­ed Guid­ance Coun­cil­lors and School So­cial Work­ers,” it said. 

Pend­ing the com­mit­tee’s rec­om­men­da­tions, it said the min­istry al­so for­mal­ly wrote act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc Don­ald Ja­cob for ad­vice on the pro­ce­dure for re­mov­ing vi­o­lent stu­dents from the school en­vi­ron­ment “to one which can of­fer them re­ha­bil­i­ta­tive ser­vices.”

It added: “The TTPS has al­so been asked to im­me­di­ate­ly pro­vide pa­trols di­rect­ly out­side of the schools in ques­tion, as well as in their vicin­i­ty, at the close of the school day, to de­ter stu­dents from vi­o­lent out­bursts.”

The min­istry said it will pur­sue fur­ther dis­cus­sions with the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to have of­fi­cers tem­porar­i­ly sta­tioned in the 15 iden­ti­fied prob­lem schools. 

Speak­ing on the in­ci­dence of school vi­o­lence yes­ter­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley not­ed that chil­dren need to un­der­stand that “con­se­quences flow from ac­tions.”

“I am very con­cerned about it and in fact, while I un­der­stand that it’s a new en­vi­ron­ment hav­ing been locked up home for al­most two years, com­ing out some chil­dren are re­leas­ing some neg­a­tive en­er­gies but the vi­o­lence I am see­ing is un­ac­cept­able,” he said. 

He said so­lu­tions are be­ing sought by Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly, but rein­tro­duc­ing cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment is not an op­tion on the ta­ble. 

“There’s no in­ten­tion to beat our way out of this,” he said. 

He said the par­ents of chil­dren per­pe­trat­ing these vi­o­lent acts need to be re­cruit­ed to “join in as­sess­ing their be­hav­iour and en­cour­ag­ing im­prove­ments in their con­duct.”

Na­tion­al Par­ent Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) Pres­i­dent Zena Ra­matali shared the Prime Min­is­ter’s sen­ti­ment, say­ing all stake­hold­ers need to be a part of the so­lu­tion.

“This is a time for us to come to­geth­er and as­sist our chil­dren, not leave them or send them to prison or sus­pend them to re­main at home for lengthy pe­ri­ods with­out any kind of in­ter­ven­tion. So we need that kind of...mean­ing­ful in­ter­ven­tion that will as­sist our chil­dren at this point in time,” she said. 

Pres­i­dent of the Con­cerned Par­ents’ Move­ment Clarence Men­doza agreed the pan­dem­ic is con­tribut­ing to the vi­o­lent out­bursts but said it can’t be to­tal­ly blamed. 

“We can­not keep look­ing back and blame the COVID-19 at this point in time. We must blame our­selves as adults and par­ents for not deal­ing with our chil­dren,” Men­doza said.


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