Na­tion­al Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) pres­i­dent, Wal­ter Stew­art, is ap­peal­ing to Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, to work with them to curb school vi­o­lence.

His call came af­ter Gue­var­ro, on June 17 dur­ing his in­au­gu­ra­tion, is­sued a strong cau­tion to par­ents, warn­ing that un­der his lead­er­ship, school vi­o­lence and youth delin­quen­cy will not be tol­er­at­ed.

He said if par­ents do not deal with their way­ward chil­dren, the po­lice will take ac­tion.

Dur­ing the NPTA’s 65th an­niver­sary In­ter­faith Ser­vice at City Hall, Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, Stew­art said the Com­mis­sion­er’s state­ment took him aback. He said he knew par­ents who were un­aware of their chil­dren’s ac­tions, as the lessons they teach at home dif­fer from the lev­el of vi­o­lence por­trayed in the school fight videos post­ed on so­cial me­dia.

“They are pulling out all the stops when it comes to the care and nur­ture of their chil­dren,” Stew­art said.

But Stew­art said peer pres­sure plays a huge role in some stu­dents’ be­hav­iour, leav­ing them in “a state of dizzi­ness” with no place to go.

He’s call­ing on Gue­var­ro to work with the NT­PA to pro­duce a train­ing pro­gramme with par­ents to teach them how to be bet­ter.

“I want to humbly sug­gest to the Com­mis­sion­er, in­vite the NPTA to a meet­ing, let us sit down and see how col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly we can solve the crime sit­u­a­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go, we are on the ground, we are in the com­mu­ni­ty, we are in the so­ci­eties,” he said.

Al­so com­ment­ing on school vi­o­lence, St Au­gus­tine MP and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen, who at­tend­ed the event, called on the NPTA to con­sid­er school so­cial work­ers as part­ners, as she said they play an in­te­gral role in curb­ing school vi­o­lence. Ameen said a so­cial work­er was able to deal with a bul­ly who ha­rassed her son and his peers.

“In his school, sev­er­al oth­er stu­dents were al­so af­fect­ed, but the bul­ly was the son of a teacher, and it wasn’t un­til the in­ter­ven­tion of the school so­cial work­er, talk­ing to boys that we re­alise that 35 out of the 37 boys in the class were vic­tims of that bul­ly,” she said.

Ameen said the so­cial work­er learnt that the boy’s moth­er was a vic­tim of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and was able to deal with the sit­u­a­tion in a restora­tive man­ner.

Mean­while, Stew­art said he was wor­ried about the par­ents who were no longer em­ployed by the Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP), es­pe­cial­ly with the new aca­d­e­m­ic year ap­proach­ing. Hun­dreds of CEPEP con­tracts were ter­mi­nat­ed on Fri­day, June 27, leav­ing thou­sands job­less.

“We can­not stand idly by and just wait and won­der what is tak­ing place with CEPEP,” he said.

How­ev­er, he ex­pressed op­ti­mism over the three boys who were in the top five of Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment ex­am per­form­ers this year. He said boys are usu­al­ly un­der­per­form­ers, but not in 2025, as he con­grat­u­lat­ed Xavier Teles­ford, Nicholas Dol­ly and Kailash Di­als­ingh.

He al­so com­mend­ed the girls, Sand­hya Boodram Ma­haraj and Ash­lyn Ramkissoon.

He had a wish for the SEA re­sults 2026.

“When the re­sults are re­leased, we do not on­ly want three boys at the top po­si­tion, but al­so want five boys at the 2026 SEA re­sults.”