An­na-Lisa Paul

A 13-year-old stu­dent prepar­ing to write the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am on June 10 at­tempt­ed to com­mit sui­cide on Mon­day and has blamed on­line school­ing and the re­sul­tant pres­sure be­ing placed on them to per­form as the rea­son be­hind it.

The stu­dent, who at­tends a pri­ma­ry school in the North East­ern Ed­u­ca­tion Dis­trict, in­gest­ed an un­known amount of bleach around 6 am on Mon­day, while her grand­moth­er was prepar­ing for work.

Reach­ing out to her teacher for help al­most im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter tak­ing the sub­stance, the stu­dent ex­plained what she had done.

The teach im­me­di­ate­ly con­tact­ed the child’s guardian, who still was un­aware of what had tak­en place. The shocked woman rushed the child to the Ari­ma Health Fa­cil­i­ty, where she was treat­ed and sta­bilised be­fore be­ing trans­ferred to the Pae­di­atric De­part­ment at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, Mt Hope.

In­ter­viewed by a psy­chi­a­trist in the pres­ence of the po­lice and her rel­a­tives, the stu­dent ad­mit­ted that her rea­son for in­gest­ing the bleach was be­cause she was “stressed over ex­am prepa­ra­tion” and that she did not want to at­tend any more on­line class­es.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly de­scribed it as a “very un­for­tu­nate and sad sit­u­a­tion” and ex­tend­ed best wish­es to the stu­dent for a full re­cov­ery.

“Many fac­tors con­tribute to a child tak­ing this type of dras­tic ac­tion. Frus­tra­tion with on­line class­es may be a fac­tor but there are like­ly many oth­ers which could play a role,” Gads­by-Dol­ly said.

Say­ing that there are school so­cial work­ers avail­able for both face-to-face and on­line ses­sions at this time, she urged par­ents who are con­cerned about changes in be­hav­iour dis­played by their chil­dren to con­tact them through teach­ers or the school prin­ci­pals.

Pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools across T&T have been closed since March 16, 2020 - four days af­ter this coun­try’s first COVID-19 case was con­firmed on March 12, 2020.

Fol­low­ing the in­tro­duc­tion of on­line school­ing in the ear­ly part of last year, a co­hort of 19,201 stu­dents wrote the SEA ex­am on Au­gust 20, 2020.

And al­though they se­cured a place­ment at sec­ondary schools, the cur­rent batch of Form One stu­dents are yet to phys­i­cal­ly meet their teach­ers and class­mates.

Sad­dened over the in­ci­dent, Na­tion­al Coun­cil of the Par­ent-Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (NCP­TA) PRO Shami­la Ra­heem said, “Chil­dren were re­al­ly look­ing for­ward to go­ing out to schools and it is a ma­jor step back right now for these kids.”

On March 18, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­peat­ed an ear­li­er as­sur­ance that if the coun­try’s COVID-19 num­bers re­mained low through­out the two-week East­er va­ca­tion pe­ri­od, Stan­dard Five stu­dents would have been al­lowed to re­turn to the phys­i­cal class­room on April 12.

How­ev­er, fol­low­ing a meet­ing with health of­fi­cials last week, per­mis­sion was not grant­ed for this as the coun­try’s cas­es be­gan to spike once again.

Ra­heem added, “Chil­dren are in their homes day in, day out. They are not be­ing al­lowed to go and do cer­tain recre­ation­al things any­more be­cause of the COVID sit­u­a­tion so they are even more sti­fled than be­fore.”

Brac­ing for more in­ci­dents of this na­ture, the NCP­TA of­fi­cer added, “As every day goes by, we are see­ing more and more cas­es of de­pres­sion and frus­tra­tion pre­sent­ing.”

Call­ing on the min­istry to pro­vide more sup­port for stu­dents and their fam­i­lies as there are some who are in dire need of things, Ra­heem sug­gest­ed the in­clu­sion of school coun­sel­lors on the Zoom plat­form so they can in­ter­act with stu­dents to “get an idea of how they are feel­ing and if they need to talk.”

She said the sim­ple of­fer of a num­ber to a stu­dent who is de­pressed or up­set and un­will­ing to speak in front of class­mates, could save a life.

Gads­by-Dol­ly agreed that “chil­dren need to get back to school for more than just class­room teach­ing as the so­cial in­ter­ac­tion is crit­i­cal.”

She added her voice to those ap­peal­ing for per­sons to ad­here to the pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions.

“It is for this rea­son that the pop­u­la­tion has been urged to co­op­er­ate in keep­ing our num­bers down so that chil­dren can re­sume face to face school in the short­est time pos­si­ble,” she said.