Fear­ful for the safe­ty of her two sons at the Siparia West Sec­ondary School, a moth­er is ap­peal­ing to Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly to take dras­tic ac­tion.

“I have no in­ten­tion of bury­ing my sons. I am ask­ing the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter to step in,” plead­ed the moth­er dur­ing an in­ter­view yes­ter­day.

Po­lice con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that they have re­ceived 75 re­ports of vi­o­lent al­ter­ca­tions in­volv­ing stu­dents from that school so far this year.

The woman, whose name was with­held to pro­tect the iden­ti­ty of her sons, ages 15 and 17, claimed some stu­dents were mem­bers of gangs at the school and have been ter­ror­is­ing oth­er stu­dents.

Re­call­ing what her sons told her, she said on Tues­day, her 15-year-old son went to the aid of a fe­male stu­dent who was al­leged­ly be­ing man­han­dled by a male stu­dent.

The boy said there was an al­ter­ca­tion. Lat­er, around 12.50 pm, the boy and his friends in­volved in the in­ci­dent ear­li­er, who are al­leged­ly mem­bers of a gang, at­tacked her son in his class­room.

“It so hap­pened that my small son big broth­er was in the class with him, he pull one of the gang mem­bers from beat­ing his lit­tle broth­er and they start to fight, while an­oth­er gang mem­ber jump in and con­tin­ued beat­ing my small son. The oth­er gang mem­bers block the door so no one could get in or out like a hostage sit­u­a­tion.”

The moth­er claimed they con­tin­ued beat­ing her sons.

“The gang in­flict­ed phys­i­cal harm on my sons. One was knocked un­con­scious by one of the gang mem­bers, who hit him in his head with a met­al chair, while the oth­er small son was beat­en where he had to play dead for them to ease up on him.”

The moth­er claimed that no school of­fi­cial called her or took her sons to be med­ical­ly ex­am­ined.

While stu­dents have been sus­pend­ed in the past for fight­ing, she said the school, the min­istry and the po­lice must take stiffer ac­tion to dis­man­tle the gangs and ar­rest the high lev­el of in­dis­ci­pline and vi­o­lence in the schools.

Re­fus­ing to send her sons back to the school un­til the sit­u­a­tion is ad­dressed, the moth­er said last term the same gang mem­bers as­sault­ed her old­er son.

Lament­ing that ed­u­ca­tors and the po­lice were fail­ing the chil­dren, she said, “Why do our na­tion’s chil­dren have to go to school in fear?”

The moth­er said there were on­ly three se­cu­ri­ty guards at the school and they could not con­trol the stu­dents.

She took her sons to the po­lice sta­tion and for med­ical treat­ment on Tues­day and yes­ter­day, she re­turned to the sta­tion for them to give their state­ments.

While her sons did not re­ceive any se­ri­ous in­juries, the moth­er said they were still in pain and trau­ma­tised.

At­tempts to reach Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly for com­ment yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful.

Last term, the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry and po­lice moved to in­crease po­lice pa­trols around schools where vi­o­lence has oc­curred.

Last month, the min­istry al­so is­sued a state­ment say­ing male stu­dents, who have com­mit­ted re­peat­ed in­frac­tions in pub­lic schools and are at risk of ex­pul­sion, will be rec­om­mend­ed for en­rol­ment in the Mil­i­tary Led Aca­d­e­m­ic Train­ing (Mi­LAT) Pro­gramme. The age range is from 5 to 16.

The Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry not­ed that the re­vised Na­tion­al School Dis­ci­pline Ma­trix was ap­proved for this sys­tem to be im­ple­ment­ed in all schools in the coun­try ef­fec­tive this aca­d­e­m­ic year.