JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Par­ents of stu­dents at­tend­ing the Ari­ma North Sec­ondary School say they are very dis­turbed af­ter a video went vi­ral show­ing a fe­male teacher and a fe­male stu­dent fight­ing.

The in­ci­dent, which oc­curred on Wednes­day, led to of­fi­cers from the TTPS vis­it­ing the school yes­ter­day, where they ad­dressed stu­dents dur­ing the morn­ing as­sem­bly, in­di­cat­ing that there would be a ze­ro-tol­er­ance ap­proach to any form of vi­o­lence at the in­sti­tu­tion.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the school yes­ter­day at the end of class­es, a par­ent called for the re­turn of cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem. The par­ent, a teacher her­self, did not want to be iden­ti­fied, but spoke on the sit­u­a­tion as she came to take her son home.

“I think that the pow­ers that be should con­sid­er that since they moved that no cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment in schools, I think they need to re­con­sid­er that, be­cause chil­dren need to have more re­spect, they need to have re­spect.”

The par­ent called for uni­formed po­lice of­fi­cers to be placed at the school. The school is not one of the 80 schools where po­lice of­fi­cers have been as­signed.

Head of the School-Ori­ent­ed Po­lice Unit, DCP Ju­nior Ben­jamin, said while Ari­ma North Sec­ondary is an at-risk school, it was not se­lect­ed. He said that de­ci­sion was now be­ing re­viewed.

How­ev­er, the par­ent called for more to be done ur­gent­ly.

“Maybe their pres­ence, if stu­dents still see them, it may thwart any thoughts of be­ing de­viant. Be­cause just by their pres­ence there, they might still hold a lit­tle re­spect for that. I think that they were need­ed; they should have been here.”

Par­ent Roger Williams said the in­ci­dent left him dis­turbed. He said he at­tend­ed the school in the past, and said there has been some im­prove­ment in the be­hav­iour of stu­dents. But he still thinks po­lice of­fi­cers should be present at Ari­ma North.

“My wife and I were talk­ing about it, and we were say­ing they should have the po­lice pres­ence. School now start, and that have to hap­pen.”

An­oth­er par­ent, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, said the in­ci­dent made him con­tem­plate re­mov­ing his child from the school. He, too, at­tend­ed the school as a teen, and said fights be­tween teach­ers and stu­dents were not new.

Work­ers at the school claimed the fight oc­curred be­tween a Form Two stu­dent and her teacher. They claimed the stu­dent was not known to be a trou­ble­mak­er but was throw­ing pa­per in class along with oth­ers when the teacher asked them to stop. They claimed that while the oth­ers end­ed the be­hav­iour, the girl con­tin­ued. Frus­trat­ed, the teacher re­port­ed­ly point­ed her hand in the stu­dent’s face, ask­ing her to stop when the in­ci­dent oc­curred. They al­so said the teacher was over­pow­ered by the fe­male stu­dent.

The 38-sec­ond-long record­ing of the fight showed stu­dents at­tempt­ing to pull the teacher and stu­dent apart as they tugged on each oth­er’s hair.

Sources at the school said both the teacher and stu­dent were ab­sent yes­ter­day. The mat­ter is be­ing probed by both the po­lice and the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry, which strong­ly con­demned vi­o­lence.