Sascha Wil­son

The 15-year-old Form Two stu­dent of the Williamsville Sec­ondary School, who is fac­ing crim­i­nal charges for stab­bing her fe­male school­mate with a knife on Mon­day, has now been ex­pelled from school.

In a press re­lease yes­ter­day, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion stat­ed that the de­ci­sion to ex­pel the stu­dent was tak­en based on the heinous na­ture of the ac­tion per­pe­trat­ed, even as the stu­dent (al­leged at­tack­er) was ac­tive­ly re­ceiv­ing the sup­port of the Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion (SSSD) at the school.

The min­istry has al­so re­ferred the sus­pend­ed stu­dent’s fam­i­ly to the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices (MS­DFS) for in­ter­ven­tion.

The stab­bing in­ci­dent took place at the Williamsville junc­tion, just af­ter school was dis­missed on Mon­day.

The vic­tim, a 15-year-old Form Two stu­dent, suf­fered stab wounds to her face, chest and arm and is still ward­ed at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

In an in­ter­view with re­porters at her home on Tues­day, the vic­tim’s grand­moth­er claimed that she was threat­ened by her at­tack­er on pre­vi­ous oc­ca­sions at the school and it was brought to the at­ten­tion of the prin­ci­pal.

In the re­lease yes­ter­day, the min­istry said it had for­mal­ly re­quest­ed that the TTPS in­crease pa­trols in all dis­tricts at the close of the school day.

While com­mu­ni­ty po­lice in­ter­ven­tion in 14 schools has re­duced the lev­el of se­ri­ous fights with­in their com­pounds, the min­istry stat­ed that it will be “close­ly mon­i­tor­ing schools with­out a his­to­ry of vi­o­lence that are now hav­ing dis­tur­bances, and the grow­ing trend of stu­dents leav­ing the school com­pound, where pa­trols and vig­i­lance have been height­ened, to fight in the streets.” How­ev­er, the min­istry not­ed that sus­pen­sion and ex­pul­sion of stu­dents are not de­sired out­comes.

Say­ing the im­por­tance of par­ents dis­charg­ing their du­ty to reg­u­late their chil­dren’s be­hav­iour can­not be over­stat­ed, Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said its SSSD is staffed with over 700 per­son­nel, in­clud­ing guid­ance coun­sel­lors, school so­cial work­ers, spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion in­struc­tors, psy­chol­o­gists and di­ag­nos­tic spe­cial­ists, who op­er­ate through­out some 625 pri­ma­ry, sec­ondary and spe­cial schools.

The min­istry said the work of these of­fi­cers is most ef­fec­tive with the co­op­er­a­tion of par­ents and in­ter­ven­tions at fam­i­ly lev­el. The min­istry as­sured it will con­tin­ue to col­lab­o­rate and part­ner with all stake­hold­ers, min­istries and agen­cies, to do what is re­quired to main­tain the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of the na­tion’s schools.

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