An urgent call has been made by the National Parent/Teacher Association (NPTA) for closer monitoring and evaluation of principals who run private schools. The association's president, Zena Ramatali, in an interview yesterday, said it was long overdue for such principals to be carefully monitored especially in the administering of discipline. She added that the time was also ripe for the revision of the Concordat. Arlene Blackman, principal and proprietor of Maraval-based Blackman Private School, appeared yesterday before a Port-of-Spain magistrate charged with assaulting two pupils of her school on January 24. Ramatali, who returned to the country a few days ago, after receiving a humanitarian award from the International Martial Arts Hall of Fame in New Jersey, said she had been inundated with calls from concerned principals. Ramatali said if a principal was charged and subsequently found guilty, that must then be a lesson for principals across the country to take stock of themselves. "We have to look at the kind of principals we are appointing, both in the public and private schools," she said. "If principals realise they are under pressure, then they should take time off rather than being cruel to a child. "The job could be very stressful at times but principals must be in control at all times."
She said reports of principals being cruel to children included forcing children to stand in the blazing sun and kneeling in the corner for hours. Noting there were some children who were already abused at home, Ramatali appealed to principals to be humane towards their charges. "If a child is abused at home and comes to school and is further abused, then we are creating instances of double jeopardy for the child," she said. "There are other alternatives to disciplining a child." If the principal of a private school was found to guilty of child abuse or exercising cruelty, Ramatali said there was very little the Education Ministry could do in disciplining that principal. And in this vein, she said the time had come for the revision of the Concordat and therefore to implement measures which would enable the ministry to exercise greater powers. Ramatali also appealed for a greater working relationship between the Principals Association and the NPTA. The Education Ministry this week placed full-page newspaper advertisements, emphasising that violence was not discipline and that discipline must never be violence.