RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing re­ports that a Form Three stu­dent was robbed and as­sault­ed in­side her class­room at Ste Madeleine Sec­ondary School on Mon­day.

The in­ci­dent, which oc­curred dur­ing school hours, was dis­closed by her fa­ther, Clarence Men­doza, chair­man of the Con­cerned Par­ents Move­ment, who said he was speak­ing both as a par­ent and an ad­vo­cate.

Men­doza said his daugh­ter was in her class­room when Form Five stu­dents en­tered, and her bag, con­tain­ing cash and her iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card, was stolen.

“She re­alised her be­long­ings were miss­ing while still in the class­room and ques­tioned her class­mates about what had hap­pened,” Men­doza said.

Ac­cord­ing to Men­doza, sev­er­al stu­dents were asked to open their bags, but one male stu­dent re­fused. He al­leged that the stu­dent then be­came vi­o­lent, pick­ing up his daugh­ter and slam­ming her on­to the floor in front of oth­er stu­dents. Af­ter­ward, the stu­dent left the class­room. Men­doza fur­ther al­leged that his daugh­ter was lat­er struck by a foot­ball while stu­dents con­tin­ued play­ing in­side the class­room, which he de­scribed as a se­ri­ous break­down in dis­ci­pline.

Men­doza re­port­ed the mat­ter to the Ste Madeleine po­lice and met with school ad­min­is­tra­tors, in­clud­ing the prin­ci­pal, the fol­low­ing morn­ing. His daugh­ter was al­so tak­en for a med­ical eval­u­a­tion to en­sure she did not suf­fer any un­seen in­juries. While Men­doza has not ruled out press­ing charges, he said his im­me­di­ate pri­or­i­ty was his daugh­ter’s well-be­ing.

He al­so spoke with the par­ent of the stu­dent ac­cused of the as­sault, sug­gest­ing that peer pres­sure may have in­flu­enced the boy’s ac­tions. Men­doza said he was not seek­ing to per­ma­nent­ly dam­age the stu­dent’s fu­ture and would pre­fer an apol­o­gy and mean­ing­ful in­ter­ven­tion, al­low­ing both stu­dents to con­tin­ue their ed­u­ca­tion in a safer en­vi­ron­ment.

Be­yond the in­ci­dent, Men­doza used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to high­light broad­er is­sues in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem. He ques­tioned whether po­lice of­fi­cers as­signed to schools have had any re­al im­pact on dis­ci­pline, not­ing that some schools now have on­ly one of­fi­cer and ask­ing what ef­fect such lim­it­ed re­sources can have in pre­vent­ing or re­spond­ing to vi­o­lent in­ci­dents.

He al­so raised con­cerns about per­sis­tent prob­lems, in­clud­ing drug use among stu­dents, which he said con­tin­ues de­spite re­peat­ed pub­lic as­sur­ances, and warned of a grow­ing prob­lem of on­line gam­bling, fa­cil­i­tat­ed by wide­spread mo­bile phone use on school com­pounds.

“Stu­dents are now gam­bling elec­tron­i­cal­ly for mon­ey dur­ing school hours,” Men­doza said, ques­tion­ing the en­force­ment of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s mo­bile phone pol­i­cy and not­ing that in­con­sis­tent ap­proach­es con­tribute to in­dis­ci­pline.

Men­doza ap­pealed to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty to ad­dress safe­ty and be­hav­iour­al is­sues in schools in a more co­or­di­nat­ed and proac­tive man­ner, warn­ing that fail­ure to in­ter­vene ear­ly could al­low harm­ful be­hav­iours to be­come en­trenched, with se­ri­ous con­se­quences be­yond the school sys­tem.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath, but a re­sponse is pend­ing.