KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

As in­ves­ti­ga­tors record wit­ness state­ments in their probe in­to the stab­bing of a Fyz­abad Sec­ondary School stu­dent, the Na­tion­al Coun­cil and Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (NCP­TA) says ed­u­ca­tion stake­hold­ers must ad­dress par­ent­ing is­sues to ad­dress school vi­o­lence.

NCP­TA pres­i­dent Kevin David says the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s (MoE) mea­sures to curb school vi­o­lence can­not just be po­lice pa­trols around schools and re­vis­ing its Na­tion­al School Dis­ci­pline Ma­trix. He said par­ents al­so need to take ac­count­abil­i­ty for what their chil­dren do.

“When I re­fer to parental in­volve­ment, I speak about par­ent­ing in­volve­ment across the board. Par­ent­ing could in­volve search­ing your child’s book bag be­fore leav­ing home or go­ing to school. That would im­me­di­ate­ly elim­i­nate the process of drugs and weapons get­ting in­to the school,” David said yes­ter­day.

In one of the lat­est in­ci­dents of vi­o­lence in schools, po­lice had to be called in to quell fights at the South East Port-of-Spain Sec­ondary School on Wednes­day. That mat­ter is now un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion af­ter po­lice had to use pep­per spray to re­strain a stu­dent who re­fused to com­ply with their in­struc­tions.

Al­so, around 3 pm Mon­day, two Form Four stu­dents were on the Fyz­abad Sec­ondary com­pound when three young men in ca­su­al cloth­ing en­tered and as­sault­ed them. Dur­ing the as­sault, one of the sus­pects cut the vic­tim on his arm with a knife. School per­son­nel in­ter­vened and dressed the in­jured stu­dent’s wounds be­fore tak­ing him for med­ical at­ten­tion. In­ves­ti­ga­tors be­lieve the sus­pects were stu­dents from an­oth­er school.

WPC Jef­frey and PC Sil­ver­ton re­spond­ed to a re­port of school vi­o­lence around 3.20 pm and met with act­ing prin­ci­pal Sharon Branch and School Safe­ty Of­fi­cer Chris­tine Howie.

South West­ern Di­vi­sion (SWD) Snr Supt An­tho­ny Re­my said his of­fi­cers cov­er the school as part of their School Pa­trol Ini­tia­tive, pro­vid­ing reg­u­lar morn­ing and af­ter­noon pa­trols to schools in the di­vi­sion.

“As Snr Supt, I had vis­it­ed that school and spoke to the prin­ci­pal and staff pri­or to this to see how the po­lice can best as­sist. I vis­it­ed as a proac­tive ap­proach to school vi­o­lence,” Re­my said.

Re­my plans to vis­it more schools in the di­vi­sion in the fu­ture.

David said the NCP­TA is aware of the in­ci­dent, which was not life-threat­en­ing.

While he said there is more need for par­ent­ing sup­port from the NCP­TA and NGOs, he ad­mit­ted par­ents’ at­ten­dance at Par­ent-Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion meet­ings around the coun­try was low. He takes some re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as NCP­TA head, say­ing there is a need for train­ing among the mem­bers to pro­vide sup­port to par­ents.

David added that there is al­so a need for more train­ing for the Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers at schools on mon­i­tor­ing the com­pound and deal­ing with vi­o­lence.

Con­cerned Par­ents Move­ment (CPMTT) pres­i­dent Clarence Men­doza mean­while said the polic­ing ini­tia­tives the MoE and Po­lice Ser­vice agreed to last year were in­suf­fi­cient.

Men­doza said po­lice have their hands filled with oth­er crimes. He said an ar­gu­ment be­tween two girls on Wednes­day at Pleas­antville Sec­ondary re­sult­ed in one stab­bing the oth­er with a pen. The prin­ci­pal and safe­ty of­fi­cer had to break up the fight.

Men­doza said the CPMTT urged par­ents to in­crease their vig­i­lance by pick­ing up their chil­dren af­ter school but on­ly some do it. There­fore, the CPMTT wants to see more af­ter-school ac­tiv­i­ties to re­place stu­dents’ idle time with some­thing pos­i­tive.

Men­doza pro­posed that the Min­istry of Sports hosts sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties and the Min­istry of Tourism Arts and Cul­ture of­fer per­for­mance and culi­nary arts class­es for oth­ers.