An­na-Lisa Paul

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia has warned se­vere con­se­quences will fol­low those found re­spon­si­ble of in­ci­dents of school vi­o­lence and in­dis­ci­pline.

The min­is­ter said these in­ci­dents have been on the rise since the be­gin­ning of the new school term in Jan­u­ary.

“What we have found that has been creep­ing in­to the school sys­tem is a lev­el of in­dis­ci­pline that we can­not tol­er­ate,” he said.

He added five or six se­ri­ous cas­es of gross in­dis­ci­pline had been record­ed thus far.

Promis­ing that de­ci­sive ac­tion will be tak­en once re­ports are re­ceived, Gar­cia said this could re­sult in the tem­po­rary re­moval of the of­fend­ing stu­dents for up to a term, fol­low­ing which he/she will be en­rolled in an al­ter­na­tive ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem - name­ly the Mil­i­tary-Led Youth Pro­gramme of Ap­pren­tice­ship and Re­ori­en­ta­tion Train­ing (MY­PART).

Mean­while, dis­cus­sions are un­der­way to de­ter­mine just how far the min­istry can go in mak­ing par­ents ac­count­able for their chil­dren’s be­hav­ior.

Dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion (MOE), Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Gar­cia said al­though they had made great strides in re­duc­ing in­ci­dents last term - down to al­most one per cent; he was now trou­bled over the in­creas­ing “street brawls” oc­cur­ring out­side schools in­volv­ing fe­male stu­dents.

He said there were just about four or five in­stances where male stu­dents have been iden­ti­fied as the main per­pe­tra­tors.

Re­fer­ring to an on­line video post­ed last Fri­day in which a fe­male stu­dent of the San Juan North Sec­ondary School was seen throw­ing a rock at a teacher’s car, Gar­cia con­firmed, “That is one of the se­ri­ous cas­es I am re­fer­ring to.”

Mean­while, he dis­missed re­ports that teach­ers had been locked in at Mal­ick Sec­ondary School on Mon­day af­ter the req­ui­site num­ber of guards failed to turn up for work. He de­scribed the claim as a gross ex­ag­ger­a­tion.

Man­ag­er, Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion, Pro­fes­sor Daren Con­rad said fe­males to­day were more as­sertive and were no longer stand­ing around wait­ing on male rel­a­tives to come to their aid.

He said they were find­ing more and more stu­dents ex­hibit­ing signs of anger and stress - which was a re­flec­tion of what was hap­pen­ing in the broad­er so­ci­ety and fur­ther afield.

“Our ap­proach to de-stress is par­tic­u­lar­ly to ei­ther be im­plo­sive, to hurt our­selves or to bring out that ag­gres­sion in many dif­fer­ent forms of bul­ly­ing and as such, not all our stu­dents read­i­ly ac­cept the no­tion of be­ing bul­lied be­cause they are al­so part of a so­ci­ety that is telling them to stick up for them­selves.”

Gar­cia stressed, “We are of the firm view that in­dis­ci­pline has to be stamped out and we are not go­ing to rest peace­ful­ly un­less we can be as­sured that a school can be a place of safe­ty, a place where teach­ers and stu­dents can re­side and op­er­ate in rel­a­tive calm and peace. We are de­ter­mined to en­sure this is done.”

Re­in­forc­ing the min­istry’s pol­i­cy as it re­lat­ed to the ze­ro-tol­er­ance pol­i­cy re­gard­ing in­dis­ci­pline and vi­o­lence, Gar­cia said, “We are go­ing to put our foot down force­ful­ly.”

In some cas­es, he said this would in­clude the re­moval of the of­fend­ing stu­dents from, “The school sys­tem un­til they show they are ready to re­turn to the school sys­tem and obey the rules of the school.”

Chief Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer, Har­ri­lal Seecha­ran said the cur­rent list of con­se­quences for such stu­dents in­clud­ed stu­dent con­fer­ences, sus­pen­sion, ex­tend­ed sus­pen­sion, and en­roll­ment at one of two Learn­ing En­hance­ment Cen­tres in the north and south of the coun­try.

Pres­i­dent, Na­tion­al En­er­gy Skills Cen­tre (NESC), Kern Dass de­scribed their three-year live-in res­i­den­tial pro­gramme as one which was geared to­wards in­still­ing dis­ci­pline, im­part­ing life skills, and en­hanc­ing em­ploy­ment suit­abil­i­ty.

Gar­cia said the min­istry will em­ploy a short­er but sim­i­lar sys­tem, de­signed to re­ha­bil­i­tate and ed­u­cate stu­dents.

He said re­search had shown that it was main­ly stu­dents in Forms Two and Three who were dis­play­ing these kinds of prob­lems.

Gar­cia said, “There is no stu­dent that can­not be re­ha­bil­i­tat­ed. There are many fac­tors that con­tribute to the stu­dent’s be­hav­ior and once we get to the bot­tom of it, we can poly cor­rec­tive mea­sures to en­sure they do what are sup­posed to do in ab­sorb­ing the qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion we pro­vide.”

Pressed to re­spond to the ad­vice be­ing giv­en to teach­ers to use pro­tec­tive gloves when han­dling in­jured/bleed­ing stu­dents - so as to pre­vent the trans­fer of in­fec­tious dis­eases and oth­er ill­ness­es, Gar­cia said this was a ba­sic com­mon prac­tice.