Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says stricter dis­ci­pli­nary mea­sures may be nec­es­sary to ad­dress ris­ing be­hav­iour­al prob­lems in schools, fol­low­ing Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath’s re­cent dis­clo­sure of an in­crease in in-class­room in­ci­dents.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia via What­sApp yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar ex­pressed con­cern over grow­ing dis­rup­tions dur­ing in­struc­tion­al time, not­ing that se­ri­ous ac­tion may be need­ed to pro­tect teach­ers and stu­dents who want to learn.

“These in­ci­dents should be ad­dressed with ex­pul­sion in my per­son­al view,” she said.

“If a stu­dent can­not be­have prop­er­ly when a teacher is present, you can on­ly imag­ine how much worse they be­have when un­su­per­vised.”

She stressed that par­ents must share re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for their chil­dren’s be­hav­iour, ar­gu­ing that schools should not have to man­age per­sis­tent mis­con­duct from a small group of stu­dents.

“It’s time for the par­ents of this mi­nor­i­ty of mis­be­hav­ing stu­dents to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for their chil­dren’s be­hav­iour and find some al­ter­na­tive for them to do if they can’t be­have ap­pro­pri­ate­ly at school,” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar added that on­go­ing dis­rup­tions can­not be al­lowed to un­der­mine the learn­ing en­vi­ron­ment for the ma­jor­i­ty of stu­dents., not­ing that many be­hav­iour­al is­sues re­flect pat­terns learned at home.

“How­ev­er, most of them are just repli­cat­ing the bad be­hav­iour of their par­ents and oth­ers at home. My gov­ern­ment will help those who want to help them­selves. If you want to be mis­be­haved, lazy and undis­ci­plined, you are on your own,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so con­firmed that the Gov­ern­ment is ad­vanc­ing leg­is­la­tion aimed at hold­ing par­ents legal­ly ac­count­able for their chil­dren’s mis­con­duct in schools. Work on the bill, part of the gov­ern­ment’s 2026 leg­isla­tive agen­da, is on­go­ing.

“Par­ents must be held legal­ly and fi­nan­cial­ly ac­count­able for their chil­dren’s be­hav­iour,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

She al­so is­sued a warn­ing to stu­dents who dis­re­gard their ed­u­ca­tion op­por­tu­ni­ties, high­light­ing the long-term con­se­quences for em­ploy­ment prospects.

“When you waste your ed­u­ca­tion op­por­tu­ni­ties and fail your ex­ams, your fu­ture will be very dif­fi­cult be­cause your earn­ing po­ten­tial will be very lim­it­ed,” she said.

“The on­ly job op­tions avail­able for per­sons who don’t pass their ex­ams are low-pay­ing me­nial jobs or be­com­ing PNM MPs.”

On Wednes­day, Dr Dowlath said that while progress has been made in re­duc­ing dis­rup­tions out­side the class­room, trou­bling new da­ta shows be­hav­iour­al is­sues are in­creas­ing­ly oc­cur­ring dur­ing in­struc­tion­al time.

He de­scribed the shift as crit­i­cal, prompt­ing re­vi­sions to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s Na­tion­al School Code of Con­duct (NSCC).

“The most im­por­tant thing we are look­ing at is to guard in­struc­tion­al time, to use as many mea­sures as pos­si­ble to max­imise stu­dents’ time in the class­room. What we need is a dis­ci­plined class­room,” Dowlath said.