It is dis­heart­en­ing that just a few weeks in­to the re­sump­tion of phys­i­cal class­es for sec­ondary school stu­dents, ef­forts to re­turn to nor­mal­cy in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem are be­ing thwart­ed, not by COVID-19, but by dis­rup­tive and vi­o­lent be­hav­iour.

The sit­u­a­tion at Siparia West Sec­ondary School, where some par­ents are con­sid­er­ing keep­ing their chil­dren at home fol­low­ing sev­er­al vi­o­lent in­ci­dents, is par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­turb­ing.

Eye­wit­ness ac­counts and videos wide­ly shared on so­cial me­dia show that these are not school­yard scuf­fles, but egre­gious acts of bru­tal­i­ty — a stu­dent be­ing stamped on re­peat­ed­ly by a group of boys and an­oth­er in­stance where a teen is fend­ing off stu­dents at­tack­ing him with a weapon that looks like a knife.

Cred­i­ble re­ports sug­gest that Siparia West is not an iso­lat­ed case. Oth­er schools are al­so grap­pling with an up­surge in vi­o­lence and dis­rup­tive be­hav­iour.

School vi­o­lence seems to feed off the larg­er prob­lem of wide­spread vi­o­lent crimes and it is a sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic, so­ci­etal and pub­lic health is­sue for this coun­try. There are con­cerns about the ca­pac­i­ty of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s se­vere­ly un­der­staffed Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion (SSSD) to ad­dress this and the myr­i­ad of chal­lenges to the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, in­clud­ing many caused by COVID-19.

How­ev­er, it might not be nec­es­sary to go back to square one to ad­dress the prob­lem. A re­view of past rec­om­men­da­tions and in­ter­ven­tions on this trou­bling and long-stand­ing prob­lem should be the first or­der of busi­ness.

Min­is­ters of ed­u­ca­tion go­ing as far back as the 1980s have been forced to con­front that is­sue.

In 1989, the then NAR gov­ern­ment host­ed a Na­tion­al Con­sul­ta­tion on Vi­o­lence and In­dis­ci­pline in Schools. That event re­sult­ed in a White Pa­per with rec­om­men­da­tions that yield­ed some re­sults in bring­ing the sit­u­a­tion un­der con­trol­—at least for a while.

In the three decades since that ex­er­cise, new el­e­ments to that old prob­lem have added to the com­plex­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion.

Some in­ci­dents took a dead­ly turn, such as in 2013 when Re­nal­do Dixon, a stu­dent of Wa­ter­loo Sec­ondary School, was stabbed to death on the school com­pound.

An­oth­er case that caused sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic alarm was when stu­dents at Ch­agua­nas North Sec­ondary School threw fire­crack­ers in­to a class­room while teach­ers were there.

Oth­er well-doc­u­ment­ed in­ci­dents have re­sult­ed in se­ri­ous in­juries to stu­dents or worse and even a few in­stances where teach­ing staff or oth­er adults were dragged in­to the fray

Amid con­cerns that the prob­lem was es­ca­lat­ing to cri­sis lev­els, in 2016, school vi­o­lence and in­dis­ci­pline was among the is­sues on the front-burn­er when the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion con­vened na­tion­al con­sul­ta­tions.

In ad­di­tion, then ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh in­tro­duced a se­ries of mea­sures to ad­dress the prob­lem, in­clud­ing de­ploy­ing full com­ple­ments of se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers at schools along with guid­ance coun­sel­lors, guid­ance of­fi­cers and school so­cial work­ers with ed­u­ca­tion­al, be­hav­iour­al and clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gists. CCTV cam­eras were in­stalled on some cam­pus­es.

Over the years, ex­perts have been re­tained, stud­ies com­mis­sioned and con­sul­ta­tions held to find so­lu­tions to this prob­lem. As it resur­faces, those find­ings and rec­om­men­da­tions should be re­vis­it­ed, ad­just­ed and up­dat­ed as re­quired.

Schools should be safe zones, not on­ly against COVID-19 but against the crim­i­nal­i­ty and in­dis­ci­pline that threat­en our chil­dren and our fu­ture.