Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Af­ter a vi­o­lent fra­cas at the Moru­ga Sec­ondary School last week, which re­sult­ed in two stu­dents be­ing sus­pend­ed, sev­er­al po­lit­i­cal lead­ers have out­lined their plans to tack­le bul­ly­ing in schools.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, at a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing at Hi­malaya Club, Barataria, on Mon­day, told sup­port­ers her gov­ern­ment would in­tro­duce an anony­mous an­ti-bul­ly­ing app to al­low stu­dents to re­port in­ci­dents. She added that par­ent pa­trols will al­so be im­ple­ment­ed in all schools un­der her watch.

“This is where a par­ent of each en­rolled stu­dent must spend at least one full day at the school of their child, work­ing with deans, teach­ers, the TTPS, and stu­dent sup­port ser­vices to main­tain dis­ci­pline. Par­ents should see what teach­ers have to deal with dai­ly,” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the UNC would al­so fund faith-based com­mu­ni­ty men­tor­ing and guid­ance pro­grammes that open every day af­ter school from 2.30 pm to 6.30 pm and on week­ends. This, she said, will serve as a com­mu­ni­ty home­work and ac­tiv­i­ty cen­tre.

Her com­ment came even as the is­sue of school vi­o­lence shot in­to the lime­light again last week, fol­low­ing an in­ci­dent in­volv­ing two Moru­ga Sec­ondary School stu­dents who were seen in a vi­ral video at­tack­ing an­oth­er stu­dent as she was be­ing shield­ed by a teacher. The two fe­male stu­dents have since been sus­pend­ed.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) leader Gary Grif­fith, who col­lab­o­rat­ed with the UNC in 2023 for the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions, said his par­ty’s plans to tack­le school vi­o­lence and bul­ly­ing were sim­i­lar to what was draft­ed while he was po­lice com­mis­sion­er from 2018 to 2021.

Grif­fith said the NTA would put un­der­cov­er po­lice of­fi­cers in 30 schools iden­ti­fied as high-risk. He said this would al­low of­fi­cers to re­ceive in­tel­li­gence on who was con­tribut­ing to or in­volved in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty at schools.

An­oth­er idea Grif­fith shared was a pro­gramme called Cross­roads, where they will train 1,000 po­lice of­fi­cers to be big broth­ers to 1,000 er­rant/trou­bled stu­dents.

Com­ment­ing on the UNC’s pro­pos­al of an anony­mous an­ti-bul­ly­ing app, To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Sec­re­tary of Ed­u­ca­tion, Re­search and Tech­nol­o­gy Zor­isha Hack­ett said any ini­tia­tive that em­pow­ered stu­dents to speak up must be thought­ful­ly im­ple­ment­ed. She said it must in­clude prop­er safe­guards, pri­va­cy pro­to­cols and a ro­bust sup­port sys­tem to en­sure mean­ing­ful fol­low-through.

“Tech­nol­o­gy, which we whole­heart­ed­ly wel­come, must com­ple­ment, not re­place, the trust-based re­la­tion­ships we are work­ing to build in our schools,” she said.

Hack­ett said they con­tin­ue to form strong re­la­tion­ships with par­ent-teacher as­so­ci­a­tions, and their ap­proach was ground­ed in the prin­ci­ple that it took an en­tire vil­lage to raise a child. She said they al­so ac­knowl­edged the im­por­tance of spir­i­tu­al and moral de­vel­op­ment in our stu­dents’ lives.

Pa­tri­ot­ic Front leader Mick­ela Pan­day said her par­ty had a ze­ro-tol­er­ance pol­i­cy for vi­o­lence against ed­u­ca­tors.

“We will es­tab­lish strict, non-ne­go­tiable dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ce­dures for any acts of ag­gres­sion to­ward teach­ers. Stu­dents who en­gage in such be­hav­iour will face se­vere con­se­quences, in­clud­ing sus­pen­sion or ex­pul­sion, fol­low­ing a fair but swift in­ves­ti­ga­tion,” she said.

She said in every school, there will be ded­i­cat­ed se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers or trained per­son­nel present to de­ter po­ten­tial ag­gres­sion and to in­ter­vene im­me­di­ate­ly when in­stances of vi­o­lence oc­cur.

Pan­day stat­ed that rapid re­sponse teams con­sist­ing of both school ad­min­is­tra­tors and law en­force­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives are ready to act when teach­ers face di­rect threats and will em­pow­er teach­ers through train­ing and sup­port.

How­ev­er, Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) leader Wat­son Duke be­lieves none of the sug­ges­tions would work to re­build the fam­i­ly struc­ture.

He said the cur­rent politi­cians had missed the mark when it comes to ad­dress­ing vi­o­lence in school.

Duke said at the heart of any com­mu­ni­ty lies the qual­i­ty of fam­i­ly life, and to im­prove this, the po­lit­i­cal leader said men and women are nur­tured and ed­u­cat­ed to know their roles in the fam­i­ly. He added that chil­dren should feel safe and sup­port­ed.

“The achieve­ment of dreams ought to be pos­si­ble ... Thus, we turn on a pro­duc­tive light in them by cre­at­ing an en­vi­ron­ment where they feel safe and se­cure to pur­sue their dreams,” he ex­plained.

The PDP head said fam­i­lies need to have a work-life bal­ance, as too many times the adults in the house­hold work or wor­ry about how to make ex­tra mon­ey.

“Peo­ple need to spend time work­ing and hav­ing to fin­ish work; they ought to spend time with their fam­i­ly,” he said.

Duke added, “The fam­i­ly that prays and plays to­geth­er, stays to­geth­er.”

He said hav­ing po­lice pa­trols and more re­li­gious ed­u­ca­tion in class­es alone can­not stop the vi­o­lence in schools.

Guardian Me­dia has been reach­ing out to Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly for com­ment on the Moru­ga Sec­ondary fra­cas since Sun­day, but at­tempts have been un­suc­cess­ful.