RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath says stu­dents who are ex­pelled from schools are not sim­ply aban­doned but are in­stead placed in al­ter­na­tive pro­grammes de­signed to ad­dress be­hav­iour­al is­sues while al­low­ing them to con­tin­ue their ed­u­ca­tion.

Speak­ing on the is­sue of school vi­o­lence and ex­pul­sion, Dowlath said the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has a four-tier in­ter­ven­tion strat­e­gy through its Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion aimed at sup­port­ing trou­bled stu­dents while main­tain­ing a safe en­vi­ron­ment for oth­er stu­dents and staff.

His com­ments came af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­cent­ly stat­ed that the ex­pul­sion of vi­o­lent stu­dents may be nec­es­sary in some cas­es to pro­tect the ma­jor­i­ty who are com­mit­ted to their ed­u­ca­tion.

Dowlath said that while dis­ci­pline is es­sen­tial, the min­istry’s ap­proach al­so fo­cus­es on re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and sup­port for stu­dents who strug­gle with be­hav­iour­al chal­lenges.

He ex­plained that when stu­dents are re­moved from the tra­di­tion­al class­room en­vi­ron­ment, they are of­ten re­ferred to al­ter­na­tive pro­grammes such as MI­LAT (Mil­i­tary-Led Aca­d­e­m­ic Train­ing) and Ser­vol, which pro­vide struc­tured learn­ing and per­son­al de­vel­op­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties.

The min­is­ter said the min­istry’s four-tier stu­dent sup­port strat­e­gy en­sures that in­ter­ven­tions are pro­vid­ed at dif­fer­ent lev­els de­pend­ing on the sever­i­ty of the be­hav­iour­al chal­lenges. Ac­cord­ing to Dowlath, the frame­work ranges from ear­ly sup­port with­in schools to more spe­cialised in­ter­ven­tions for stu­dents ex­pe­ri­enc­ing se­ri­ous be­hav­iour­al or so­cial dif­fi­cul­ties. He not­ed that the pro­gramme is sup­port­ed by on­line sys­tems and was dis­cussed ex­ten­sive­ly dur­ing par­lia­men­tary de­bate.

The Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion, which over­sees these ini­tia­tives, now has a staff com­ple­ment of rough­ly 800 pro­fes­sion­als, in­clud­ing school so­cial work­ers, guid­ance coun­sel­lors, psy­chol­o­gists and spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion teach­ers. Be­tween 2022 and 2024, the min­istry hired 80 ad­di­tion­al school so­cial work­ers and 40 guid­ance coun­sel­lors to strength­en sup­port in schools iden­ti­fied as high pri­or­i­ty.

Those hires brought the na­tion­al to­tal to 227 school so­cial work­ers and 282 guid­ance of­fi­cers and coun­sel­lors, many of whom are de­ployed to about 106 “schools of fo­cus” where ad­di­tion­al in­ter­ven­tion is need­ed.

The sup­port sys­tem serves 476 pub­lic pri­ma­ry schools—443 in Trinidad and 33 in To­ba­go—and 134 pub­lic sec­ondary schools across the coun­try. How­ev­er, youth ad­vo­cate Je­re­my Ed­wards, founder of the Sil­ver Lin­ing Foun­da­tion, warned that ex­pul­sion alone can­not solve the grow­ing prob­lem of school vi­o­lence.

“While schools must pro­tect teach­ers and stu­dents, per­ma­nent­ly re­mov­ing young peo­ple from the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem of­ten deep­ens the very prob­lems we are try­ing to solve,” Ed­wards said.

He said re­search shows that ex­clud­ing stu­dents with­out prop­er in­ter­ven­tion in­creas­es the like­li­hood of school dropouts, delin­quen­cy and gang in­volve­ment.

Ed­wards be­lieves a more ef­fec­tive ap­proach in­volves struc­tured be­hav­iour­al in­ter­ven­tion pro­grammes in which stu­dents re­moved from reg­u­lar class­rooms con­tin­ue their ed­u­ca­tion while re­ceiv­ing coun­selling and ther­a­py.

Ed­wards added that ad­dress­ing school vi­o­lence re­quires a co­or­di­nat­ed ap­proach that pro­tects vic­tims while en­sur­ing trou­bled stu­dents and their fam­i­lies re­ceive the sup­port need­ed to change course.