Khara Per­sad

Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Tim Gopeesingh says every sec­ondary school in the coun­try will be out­fit­ted with two hand-held scan­ners to help al­le­vi­ate in­stances of vi­o­lence in schools, while the sus­pen­sion sys­tem for stu­dents is be­ing re­viewed.Speak­ing at a meet­ing with prin­ci­pals and su­per­vi­sors of sec­ondary schools at the Rudranath Capildeo Learn­ing Re­source Cen­tre, McBean, Cou­va, Gopeesingh said scan­ners in schools would be im­ple­ment­ed on time for the new term and all stu­dents would be scanned."All stu­dents have to be scanned by two hand-held scan­ners on en­ter­ing your schools, so you could set up a sys­tem for that," he said.He said, how­ev­er, that the sys­tem should not be used in a way that would abuse stu­dents' pri­va­cy."En­sure that your sys­tems are in place to pre­vent any abuse what­so­ev­er."

He al­so said the min­istry was look­ing at the pos­si­bil­i­ty of leas­ing or pur­chas­ing walk-in scan­ners."We've start­ed the process in a num­ber of schools al­ready where we are util­is­ing two walk-in scan­ners, and that has been found to be very ef­fec­tive."He said the first day it was used in a par­tic­u­lar school, two stu­dents were dis­cov­ered with knives while oth­ers at­tempt­ed to hide or throw away drugs from their bags."We have to be very dili­gent now, so that we pro­tect you (prin­ci­pals), your teach­ers and the fel­low stu­dents from any child wish­ing or con­tem­plat­ing some­thing harm­ful," he said."We had one mur­der in a school and we must not ever have an­oth­er again. What­ev­er we have to do as prin­ci­pals work­ing with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, we have to en­sure that we do that."

Gopeesingh was re­fer­ring to Re­nal­do Dixon, 14, a Form Three stu­dent at the Wa­ter­loo Sec­ondary School who died af­ter he was stabbed three times by an­oth­er stu­dent on May 27.The min­is­ter al­so ad­vised that 782 stu­dent sup­port ser­vice of­fi­cers would be dis­trib­uted with­in the school sys­tem. The se­lec­tion process for the new po­si­tions would take place dur­ing the Ju­ly-Au­gust va­ca­tion pe­ri­od."There­fore, from Sep­tem­ber, hope­ful­ly you will have more of your stu­dent sup­port ser­vices of­fi­cers with­in your school sys­tem," he said."We hope to have at least one guid­ance of­fi­cer or guid­ance coun­cil­lor per sec­ondary school for sure." Gopeesingh al­so in­vit­ed prin­ci­pals and vice-prin­ci­pals to com­ment on the sus­pen­sion pol­i­cy in schools, and how to man­age stu­dents who were placed on sus­pen­sion.

One prin­ci­pal said the en­tire sys­tem need­ed to be re­viewed as stu­dents should not be sent out of school af­ter in­frac­tions."There should not be any sus­pen­sions in schools."He said such pun­ish­ment en­cour­aged stu­dents to break the rules, as if he or she want­ed to be out of school all they need to do was to break the rules to get a sus­pen­sion.Oth­er prin­ci­pals dis­agreed, say­ing the school en­vi­ron­ment was not the right place to re­ha­bil­i­tate stu­dents in cer­tain ex­treme cas­es and a "sus­pen­sion cen­tre" for each dis­trict was need­ed."Some stu­dents need to be in an al­ter­na­tive ed­u­ca­tion­al en­vi­ron­ment," said Denise Her­nan­dez, prin­ci­pal of the San­gre Grande Sec­ondary School. She said in the last meet­ing, prin­ci­pals made a rec­om­men­da­tion for a sus­pen­sion cen­tre fol­low­ing the mod­el that ex­ists in Bar­ba­dos, so that stu­dents could be helped."We have to se­ri­ous­ly start look­ing at the al­ter­na­tive ed­u­ca­tion process," she added. Gopeesingh said a team from the min­istry had al­ready spo­ken with peo­ple in Bar­ba­dos re­spon­si­ble for their sus­pen­sion cen­tre, and had in­vit­ed them to come to Trinidad to share more in­for­ma­tion on what was im­ple­ment­ed.He said guid­ance coun­cil­lors with­in schools in each dis­trict could iden­ti­fy which stu­dents need­ed to be sent to sus­pen­sion cen­tres.