Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath has warned that there are al­ready ex­ist­ing sys­tems in schools to deal with con­flict, and par­ents can face sanc­tions if they take mat­ters in­to their own hands.

He is­sued the warn­ing at yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia con­fer­ence, where he was asked about the in­ci­dents of vi­o­lence that oc­curred dur­ing this week’s start of the new aca­d­e­m­ic year.

At the Ari­ma North Sec­ondary School, a stu­dent was seen fight­ing with a fe­male teacher, and out­side the El Do­ra­do East Sec­ondary School, where of­fi­cers are sta­tioned, a par­ent was caught on cam­era slap­ping a stu­dent whom he ac­cused of as­sault­ing his child.

Asked about the lat­ter in­ci­dent, Dowlath said:

“One of the mea­sures we’re tak­ing is that we’re de­vel­op­ing par­ent­ing pro­grammes so par­ents un­der­stand that when con­flicts arise in schools among stu­dents, of course the par­ents are the le­gal guardians, but there are sys­tems al­ready ex­ist­ing in schools and I’m ask­ing par­ents to sup­port the sys­tems that are in schools with the Deans of Dis­ci­plines, with the prin­ci­pals. You can start with the class­room teach­ers if it’s a pri­ma­ry school.

“So, there are al­ready ex­ist­ing sys­tems, and when you take ac­tions in­to your own hands, there are oth­er sanc­tions that may come your way.”

He said in­ves­ti­ga­tions are un­der­way in­to both in­ci­dents.

“At Ari­ma North, the min­istry in­ter­vened im­me­di­ate­ly be­cause the Com­mu­ni­ty Po­lice vis­it­ed the school and an as­sem­bly was held with all the stu­dents, and coun­selling ses­sions were con­duct­ed with the af­fect­ed class­es. A par­ent con­fer­ence has al­so been arranged,” Dowlath added.

He said the stu­dent “re­mains in class.”

He al­so said the in­ci­dent at El Do­ra­do East is re­ceiv­ing ur­gent at­ten­tion with sup­port from the TTPS.

Dowlath fur­ther ad­vised teach­ers who find them­selves in con­flict with stu­dents to use the mea­sures al­ready avail­able in schools to deal with such sit­u­a­tions.

The Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter said the pres­ence of po­lice at schools will be con­tin­u­ous­ly as­sessed.

“We’re tak­ing all mat­ters of school in­dis­ci­pline ex­treme­ly se­ri­ous­ly. We as­sure the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, par­ents, and stu­dents that we con­tin­ue to strength­en these mea­sures. We’re not wait­ing for the end of six months but at the end of every week, we’re re­assess­ing where we are in terms of in­dis­ci­pline in schools.”

Mean­while, dur­ing a TTPS me­dia con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, DCP Ju­nior Ben­jamin, li­ai­son of­fi­cer of the School Ori­ent­ed Polic­ing Unit, said, “There will be a ze­ro tol­er­ance even as we go for­ward with­in the school year.”

With 95 of­fi­cers sta­tioned at schools around the coun­try, he said the TTPS was work­ing with stake­hold­ers to en­sure safe­ty.

He urged the pub­lic not to brand the Ari­ma North Sec­ondary in a neg­a­tive man­ner af­ter this week’s in­ci­dent and point­ed to the re­cent aca­d­e­m­ic ex­cel­lence of six stu­dents who had pre­vi­ous­ly found them­selves in trou­ble.

Re­gard­ing the in­ci­dent at El Do­ra­do East Sec­ondary, the DCP said, “Based on the facts be­fore us, we are say­ing this sit­u­a­tion is un­ac­cept­able and will not be tol­er­at­ed.”