KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

For­mer ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly is not im­pressed by the Gov­ern­ment’s move to ex­pel stu­dents who per­pe­trate acts of vi­o­lence in school. The for­mer min­is­ter said in­ci­dents of school vi­o­lence have al­ready been re­port­ed to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

How­ev­er, she warned Gov­ern­ment that “lock­ing up young peo­ple can­not be your plan.”

Gads­by-Dol­ly said Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s an­nounce­ment is noth­ing new.

“Acts of school vi­o­lence are rou­tine­ly re­port­ed to the TTPS, and are al­ready pun­ish­able by ex­pul­sion. The Prime Min­is­ter has added noth­ing new or help­ful to the con­ver­sa­tion,” she said.

She al­so ques­tioned the Gov­ern­ment’s plans for stu­dents af­ter they are ex­pelled.

“The Prime Min­is­ter seems to be es­pous­ing a ret­ro­grade pol­i­cy—sim­ply lock up mis­be­hav­ing young peo­ple. While this may feel like im­me­di­ate jus­tice, what is the next step for these youth, who will now have crim­i­nal records? Al­so rel­e­vant is the fact that there is a se­ri­ous eth­nic and ge­o­graph­ic bias as­so­ci­at­ed with school vi­o­lence. What of those im­pli­ca­tions? Has the Prime Min­is­ter con­sid­ered this?” she asked.

Ac­cord­ing to Gads­by-Dol­ly, un­der the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM)-ad­min­is­tra­tion, sev­er­al ini­tia­tives suc­cess­ful­ly re­duced school vi­o­lence when stu­dents re­turned to phys­i­cal class­es af­ter the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

She said these in­clud­ed as­sign­ing so­cial work­ers and guid­ance coun­cil­lors to schools with the high­est lev­els of vi­o­lence, com­mu­ni­ty po­lice as­sist­ing schools with men­tor­ship ses­sions and cur­ricu­lum in­ter­ven­tions.

As for stu­dents who were ex­pelled, Gads­by-Dol­ly said the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry had part­nered with Ser­vol to take them and stu­dents at risk of ex­pul­sion in.

She said, “The Prime Min­is­ter seems to have been em­bar­rassed in­to mak­ing knee-jerk state­ments when faced with the fact that the school vi­o­lence prob­lem in T&T tran­scends min­is­ters, prime min­is­ters or po­lit­i­cal par­ties. ... Much more is ex­pect­ed from a Prime Min­is­ter who served as a for­mer min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion. Lock­ing up young peo­ple can­not be your plan.”

Gads­by-Dol­ly al­so claimed Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath has stopped restora­tive prac­tices at schools, a claim Dowlath yes­ter­day de­nied.