An­na-Lisa Paul

Stu­dents from some crime hotspots risk their lives just to get to school and are al­so faced with gang cul­ture at school.

So said the prin­ci­pal of Barataria South Sec­ondary School, Shar­lene Hicks-Rae­burn, who added it was not re­al­is­tic to ex­pect some of her stu­dents to re­port to school on time.

She clas­si­fied that as a "life or death sit­u­a­tion for some just to leave their home to come here."

Hicks-Rae­burn was speak­ing yes­ter­day at a sym­po­sium, ti­tled Women Man­ag­ing Ed­u­ca­tion in Vul­ner­a­ble Com­mu­ni­ties, at the School of Ed­u­ca­tion, St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies.

Hicks-Rae­burn said many chil­dren to­day viewed school as a safe haven from the dan­gers that lurk out­side the school walls and a place where they could seek refuge from home with­out par­tic­i­pat­ing in class­es.

This view was strong­ly sup­port­ed by prin­ci­pal of the Suc­cess/Laven­tille Sec­ondary School, Hami­da Baksh, who ac­knowl­edged the loss of sev­er­al stu­dents with­in the last two years.

Yes­ter­day's dis­cus­sion was ded­i­cat­ed to the mem­o­ries of stu­dents–Mark Richards and Deneil­son Smith–who were both dragged from a taxi and shot dead on Jan­u­ary 21 as they made their way home.

An­oth­er stu­dent, Sal­im Dalzell was al­so gunned down out­side the school gate in No­vem­ber 2014. The three had been stu­dents of the Suc­cess/Laven­tille Sec­ondary School.

Re­fer­ring to the "gang el­e­ments" which the two of­fi­cials agreed had crept in­to school halls, Hicks-Rae­burn said the safe­ty con­cerns by stu­dents in­ter­est­ed in learn­ing were yet an­oth­er prob­lem they had to grap­ple with dai­ly.

She re­vealed that last week, a stu­dent was caught with a knife and cut­lass in his bag, which he claimed he had to use for his own pro­tec­tion in school.

Re­mem­ber­ing the stu­dents whose lives were lost in vi­o­lent cir­cum­stances dur­ing the past two years, prin­ci­pal of Suc­cess/Laven­tille Sec­ondary School, Hami­da Baksh re­vealed the per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al trans­for­ma­tion she had un­der­gone as a re­sult.

Com­ment­ing on the role of the par­ent, Baksh said that schools along the East/West Cor­ri­dor were un­der "pres­sure."

She said as many par­ents strug­gled to sur­vive dai­ly, there was of­ten lit­tle time or in­ter­est paid to the child's school progress and even slim­mer at­ten­tion to­wards home­work and re­vi­sion.

Re­fer­ring to gang vi­o­lence as the most ur­gent "re­al prob­lem" fac­ing the au­thor­i­ties now, Baksh said stu­dents were con­stant­ly bat­tling peer pres­sure, vi­o­lence and gang lead­ers.

She said teach­ers were find­ing it in­creas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to "sell" the ed­u­ca­tion in the face of these fac­tors and that some par­ents seized the op­por­tu­ni­ty to send their chil­dren to school so they could re­main "safe."

Pre­sent­ing her changed mind­set and how she in­ter­act­ed with her stu­dents, Baksh said she was grate­ful every­day when stu­dents turned up at school.

How­ev­er, of­fi­cials from sec­ondary schools in Port-of-Spain, Barataria and Cunu­pia yes­ter­day said that it was an up­hill task as the "cur­ricu­lum of the street" seemed to be wield­ing more in­flu­ence among their stu­dents.