An­na-Lisa Paul

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion, Re­search and Tech­nol­o­gy has launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to a stab­bing in­ci­dent at the Sig­nal Hill Sec­ondary Schoo.

The vi­o­lent act re­port­ed­ly oc­curred on the school’s premis­es on Thurs­day be­tween two boys from the low­er forms.

Forms One to Three are of­ten re­ferred to as the low­er forms, while Forms Four to Six nor­mal­ly con­sti­tute the high­er forms.

Con­demn­ing the act, As­sem­bly­woman Zor­isha Hack­ett and as­sis­tant sec­re­tary Or­lan­do Kerr yes­ter­day both pledged, “to place ur­gent at­ten­tion on at­ten­u­at­ing this in­crease in vi­o­lence per­pe­trat­ed by or against stu­dents.”

In a re­lease on Fri­day, the Di­vi­sion said, “Of­fi­cers with­in the Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Unit have been as­signed to ur­gent­ly pro­vide the re­quired sup­port to the stu­dents in­volved.”

Say­ing a stu­dent from an up­per form was the one who ini­tial­ly in­ter­vened to quell the in­ci­dent af­ter a fight broke out be­tween two boys from a low­er form, T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion To­ba­go rep­re­sen­ta­tive Bradon Roberts said, “He was able to sep­a­rate the stu­dents be­fore the sit­u­a­tion es­ca­lat­ed.”

Roberts said the vic­tim re­ceived a cut to one of his hands dur­ing the fra­cas.

Un­able to say if a knife or Chi­nese chop­per was the weapon used, as he had been re­ceiv­ing con­flict­ing re­ports, Roberts said, “The con­cern now is that when such sit­u­a­tions take place, how are they to be re­solved be­cause teach­ers have to be very care­ful when part­ing a fight.”

Claim­ing teach­ers had been in­jured in the past when in­ter­ven­ing in sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions, he con­tin­ued, “Se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers in a school have said out­right that their du­ty is to pro­tect the com­pound and not so much of per­sons…so they may as­sist but the prin­ci­pal is the per­son who is ul­ti­mate­ly re­spon­si­ble.”

Call­ing for the im­me­di­ate im­ple­men­ta­tion of sup­port sys­tems to help ad­dress such in­ci­dents, the TTUTA of­fi­cial said, “While schools have in­tro­duced search­ing of bags and so on, those things have not stood up for any lengthy pe­ri­od of time and es­pe­cial­ly with COVID-19 now, you don’t want peo­ple lin­ing up by the gate too long.”

Roberts added, “There isn’t any true search­ing to see who is bring­ing what on the com­pound at any giv­en time.

“So that is where the risk is.”