Sascha Wil­son 

The par­ent body of the Preysal Sec­ondary School is con­demn­ing an in­ci­dent last week where stu­dents locked a po­lice of­fi­cer in a class­room.

Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (PTA) pres­i­dent Kris Balka­rans­ingh con­firmed that the in­ci­dent oc­curred last Fri­day, but said he could not pro­vide fur­ther de­tails as the school has not is­sued any of­fi­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tion on the mat­ter.

Preysal Sec­ondary was among the high-risk schools where po­lice of­fi­cers were as­signed at the start of the new school term last Mon­day, in an ef­fort to clamp down on in­dis­ci­pline and vi­o­lence. Guardian Me­dia was told the two male of­fi­cers were oc­cu­py­ing the Span­ish class­room, since the teacher is on leave.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view to­day, Balka­rans­ingh said he sup­port­ed a po­lice pres­ence in schools even be­fore the gov­ern­ment made the an­nounce­ment.

“The ac­tions that took place on Fri­day is strong­ly con­demned by the PTA ex­ec­u­tive of the Preysal Sec­ondary School. We do not sup­port or con­done those types of ac­tions.”

He added that stu­dents must be held ac­count­able.

“Chil­dren need to show re­spect for au­thor­i­ty and el­ders and the PTA will al­so sup­port what­ev­er nec­es­sary but rea­son­able dis­ci­pline is tak­en against the per­pe­tra­tors of the said act.”

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to a re­quest for com­ment.