CARISA LEE

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Po­lice are set to charge two stu­dents, ages 13 and 15, who were seen phys­i­cal­ly as­sault­ing an­oth­er stu­dent on a stair­case at the Siparia East Sec­ondary School.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that po­lice have com­plet­ed their in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the Oc­to­ber 29 in­ci­dent and have laid the charges at the Chil­dren’s Court in Fyz­abad.

Po­lice ex­pect­ed the sum­mons­es to be is­sued on Mon­day. The two girls, who are be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­ney-at-law Nala G Poodan, are ex­pect­ed to be charged with as­sault by beat­ing.

A 32-sec­ond video cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia showed one stu­dent as­cend­ing a stair­case while two oth­ers re­peat­ed­ly struck her and at­tempt­ed to pull her down.

The 14-year-old vic­tim was tak­en for med­ical treat­ment but did not sus­tain se­ri­ous in­juries.

Re­spond­ing to the po­lice’s de­ci­sion, Pres­i­dent of the T&T Na­tion­al Coun­cil of Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tions Inc. (NPTA), Wal­ter Stew­art, said the or­gan­i­sa­tion ful­ly sup­ports the move and hopes it serves as a warn­ing to stu­dents en­gag­ing in vi­o­lent be­hav­iour.

“This mea­sure should not on­ly serve as a warn­ing to oth­er stu­dents, but is al­so a clear and un­am­bigu­ous demon­stra­tion that there are con­se­quences to every ac­tion,” Stew­art said.

He added that stu­dents must un­der­stand that such con­duct is un­ac­cept­able and will not be tol­er­at­ed, es­pe­cial­ly as it di­rect­ly vi­o­lates the school’s code of con­duct, which pro­motes re­spect, em­pa­thy, and the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of all stu­dents and staff.

“The NPTA is firm in its stance that there is ze­ro tol­er­ance for school vi­o­lence and bul­ly­ing,” he said.

How­ev­er, Stew­art not­ed that while the NPTA sup­ports puni­tive ac­tions, it al­so ad­vo­cates for restora­tive prac­tices aimed at help­ing stu­dents un­der­stand the harm caused, take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, and make pos­i­tive be­hav­iour­al changes.

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA), Crys­tal Bevin Ashe, al­so ex­pressed sup­port for the po­lice ac­tion but stressed that pun­ish­ment alone will not solve the prob­lem.

“This is just a tem­po­rary so­lu­tion — the root cause must be iden­ti­fied,” he said. “Pupils need to be taught from a very young age prop­er con­flict res­o­lu­tion skills. This is­sue re­quires all stake­hold­ers in ed­u­ca­tion and par­ents to be on the same page if our young charges are to be­come the best ver­sions of them­selves.”

At the start of the new school year, the Gov­ern­ment de­ployed 95 trained spe­cial re­serve po­lice of­fi­cers to pri­ma­ry schools and sec­ondary schools iden­ti­fied as high-risk. Siparia East Sec­ondary is among those in­sti­tu­tions.

Guardian Me­dia al­so con­tact­ed Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath for com­ment on the po­lice’s de­ci­sion, but up to news time, no re­sponse had been re­ceived.