An­na-Lisa Paul

Ten stu­dents who took turns beat­ing a class­mate have been sus­pend­ed from the El Do­ra­do West Sec­ondary and would be sent for re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion at the Learn­ing En­hance­ment Cen­tre, in Cou­va.

The in­ci­dent which took place near­ly two weeks ago, was video­taped and shared on so­cial me­dia, was yet an­oth­er case of vi­o­lence among school chil­dren.

The at­tack de­pict­ed in the two-minute, four-sec­ond video re­port­ed­ly filmed on Oc­to­ber 26, cap­tured the vic­tim be­ing threat­ened and pushed be­fore the group of fe­male stu­dents be­gin punch­ing and kick­ing her. She was kicked in the head by one of the at­tack­ers. Chief Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer Har­ri­lal Seecha­ran said yes­ter­day the vic­tim of the fight re­ceived coun­selling and had re­turned to school with­out any prob­lems.

He said that the min­istry con­tin­ued to pro­vide on­go­ing sup­port for all the stu­dents in­volved.

Speak­ing on the is­sue as they at­tend­ed a sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny at the Caribbean Dock­yard and En­gi­neer­ing Ser­vices Lim­it­ed, Ch­aguara­mas - Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia said he would meet with the par­ents of the 10 stu­dents on Tues­day.

Both Seecha­ran and Gar­cia said that strate­gies were be­ing im­ple­ment­ed to min­imise and elim­i­nate such acts of vi­o­lence in­clud­ing stricter mon­i­tor­ing by prin­ci­pals and school su­per­vi­sors.

A week ago, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry Dr Lovell Fran­cis ex­pressed con­cern about the bru­tal­i­ty of the at­tack as he said cor­rec­tive mea­sures had been in­tro­duced im­me­di­ate­ly in the af­ter­math of at­tack.

Fran­cis said El Do­ra­do West Sec­ondary was one of the bet­ter func­tion­ing gov­ern­ment schools that con­tin­ued to do very well aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly, and the in­ci­dent was an iso­lat­ed one which does not re­flect the school's true po­ten­tial.