The video is shock­ing.

A class of stu­dents from the Sig­nal Hill Sec­ondary School in To­ba­go bru­tal­ly at­tack­ing one fe­male stu­dent.

While the time and date are un­known, the vi­ral video, which sur­faced yes­ter­day, cap­tured the beat­ing for two min­utes and forty sec­onds.

It showed over 20 stu­dents tak­ing turns—and at times to­geth­er—kick­ing, slap­ping, chok­ing and push­ing the stu­dent from all di­rec­tions. One stu­dent even climbed on a desk to kick the vic­tim in the head from above.

Most of the at­tack­ers in­volved were fe­male stu­dents, but the footage lat­er showed a few male at­tack­ers. While some cheered on, oth­ers threw bot­tles and oth­er ob­jects, hit­ting the stu­dent in the head and face.

Just over a minute in­to the video, the at­tack­ers stopped to scream ex­ple­tives at her while a group mocked and laughed at her as they sur­round­ed and cor­nered her.

Through­out the or­deal, the child, who at­tempt­ed to fight back at times, blocked and cov­ered her face and stom­ach from the blows. She then hid un­der a desk as the beat­ing con­tin­ued from above.

Con­tact­ed for a re­sponse yes­ter­day, Sec­re­tary of Ed­u­ca­tion, Re­search and Tech­nol­o­gy (DERTech), Zor­isha Hack­ett said she saw the video for the first time when Guardian Me­dia for­ward­ed it to her.

As such, she could not com­ment at the mo­ment.

But in a state­ment re­leased on Face­book just af­ter 6.30 pm, she said she was dis­ap­point­ed and deeply con­cerned.

Recog­nis­ing the grav­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion, Hack­ett called for a thor­ough and com­pre­hen­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tion, in­volv­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween DERTech staff, the school’s prin­ci­pal, staff, par­ents, the Par­ent-Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion, law en­force­ment and oth­er rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers.

Hack­ett stat­ed, “The ac­tions por­trayed in this video are not on­ly dis­turb­ing, but stand in di­rect con­tra­dic­tion to the prin­ci­ples of safe­ty, re­spect, and in­clu­sion that our ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions should em­body.”

She again con­demned the in­ci­dent and all acts of vi­o­lence and em­pha­sised the need for schools to be places of learn­ing, growth, and un­der­stand­ing.

She said the aim is to en­sure that all those re­spon­si­ble for the as­sault are held ac­count­able for their ac­tions.

She said im­me­di­ate ac­tion will al­so be tak­en to ad­dress this spe­cif­ic in­ci­dent and pre­vent fu­ture oc­cur­rences of vi­o­lence with­in schools.

Hack­ett stressed the im­por­tance of un­der­stand­ing the psy­cho­log­i­cal fac­tors con­tribut­ing to such be­hav­iours and ac­tions. She said the di­vi­sion will do all in its pow­er to fos­ter school en­vi­ron­ments built up­on em­pa­thy, tol­er­ance, and peace­ful con­flict res­o­lu­tion.

“This re­gret­table in­ci­dent un­der­scores the ur­gency of cul­ti­vat­ing a cul­ture of re­spect, kind­ness, and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty with­in our schools,” Hack­ett said in her post.

Urg­ing all stake­hold­ers to join her in a mis­sion of cre­at­ing safe and nur­tur­ing ed­u­ca­tion­al en­vi­ron­ments, she of­fered her sup­port to the vic­tim and her fam­i­ly dur­ing this time.

At­tempts to reach head of the To­ba­go Po­lice Di­vi­sion, ACP Col­lis Hazel, on the in­ci­dent were un­suc­cess­ful.