BAVI­TA GOPAULCHAN

Se­nior Pro­duc­er

bavi­ta.gopaulchan@guardian.co.tt

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) is rais­ing con­cerns that ed­u­ca­tors could be as­signed re­spon­si­bil­i­ties out­side their ex­ist­ing job func­tions un­der the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed parental re­spon­si­bil­i­ty leg­is­la­tion aimed at tack­ling school vi­o­lence and stu­dent in­dis­ci­pline.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Fri­day an­nounced to the Par­lia­ment that a parental re­spon­si­bil­i­ty frame­work would be among the key pieces of leg­is­la­tion her ad­min­is­tra­tion in­tends to in­tro­duce dur­ing the cur­rent par­lia­men­tary term.

The leg­is­la­tion is in­tend­ed to make par­ents or guardians more legal­ly ac­count­able for the be­hav­iour and wel­fare of their chil­dren, par­tic­u­lar­ly where chil­dren are in­volved in vi­o­lence, bul­ly­ing, gang ac­tiv­i­ty, or per­sis­tent mis­con­duct.

While TTUTA says it sup­ports mea­sures de­signed to im­prove dis­ci­pline in schools, the union is urg­ing the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to en­sure that im­ple­men­ta­tion of the leg­is­la­tion does not place ad­di­tion­al bur­dens on teach­ers and oth­er ed­u­ca­tion per­son­nel.

The as­so­ci­a­tion said it dis­cussed the pro­pos­al dur­ing a meet­ing with min­istry of­fi­cials and high­light­ed con­cerns that some of its mem­bers may be ex­pect­ed to per­form du­ties be­yond the scope of their agreed re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

“There are some as­pects that re­quire some of our mem­bers to per­form ad­di­tion­al du­ties, du­ties that may pos­si­bly fall out­side of the re­mit of their reg­u­lar du­ties,” TTUTA said.

The union said it raised the is­sue with MoE of­fi­cials and was in­formed that the mat­ter would be re­viewed by the min­istry’s le­gal de­part­ment.

TTUTA al­so ques­tioned whether the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem cur­rent­ly has the re­sources need­ed to ef­fec­tive­ly im­ple­ment the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion.

The as­so­ci­a­tion point­ed to the non-re­new­al of con­tracts for Be­hav­iour­al Out­reach and As­sess­ment Spe­cial­ists (BOAS), so­cial work­ers, guid­ance coun­sel­lors and oth­er stu­dent sup­port per­son­nel, de­scrib­ing them as crit­i­cal to ad­dress­ing be­hav­iour­al chal­lenges among stu­dents.

Ac­cord­ing to TTUTA, those pro­fes­sion­als play a key role in stu­dent re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, in­ter­ven­tion and doc­u­men­ta­tion and are es­sen­tial to any ef­fort aimed at re­duc­ing in­dis­ci­pline in schools. The union ar­gued that mean­ing­ful im­prove­ments will be dif­fi­cult to achieve with­out the sup­port ser­vices need­ed to work di­rect­ly with stu­dents ex­pe­ri­enc­ing be­hav­iour­al is­sues.

As a re­sult, TTUTA is call­ing on the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to im­me­di­ate­ly re­new the con­tracts of those work­ers and re­turn them to schools.

For­mer min­is­ter of ed­u­ca­tion, Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly, has al­so urged cau­tion, say­ing she wants to see the de­tails of the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion be­fore of­fer­ing a full as­sess­ment.

“I have heard the gen­er­al an­nounce­ments, but I await the de­tails to un­der­stand ex­act­ly what is be­ing pro­posed; as they say, the dev­il is in the de­tails,” she said.

Gads­by-Dol­ly not­ed that Trinidad and To­ba­go al­ready has laws in­tend­ed to ad­dress vi­o­lence and ques­tioned whether new leg­is­la­tion is re­quired or whether greater en­force­ment of ex­ist­ing mea­sures is need­ed.

“At the end of the day, it is the en­force­ment that makes the dif­fer­ence,” she said.

She added that in­tro­duc­ing ad­di­tion­al leg­is­la­tion with­out the struc­tures nec­es­sary for im­ple­men­ta­tion may not achieve the de­sired out­come.

De­spite its con­cerns, TTUTA said it sup­ports the ob­jec­tive of the pro­posed parental re­spon­si­bil­i­ty leg­is­la­tion and be­lieves it could help im­prove dis­ci­pline if prop­er­ly en­forced.