KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) wants all hands on deck in deal­ing with the in­crease in dis­or­der­ly be­hav­iour tak­ing place at schools across the coun­try.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, TTUTA vice pres­i­dent Adesh Dwari­ka said teach­ers are go­ing above and be­yond to help chil­dren but in­stead of more ex­pul­sions, col­lab­o­ra­tive in­ter­ven­tion is what is re­quired.

His call comes in the wake of the ex­pul­sion ear­li­er this week of a Siparia East Sec­ondary stu­dent who was caught on cam­era us­ing ob­scen­i­ties at her teacher.

Dwari­ka said, “TTUTA is not call­ing for ex­pul­sions. What we are call­ing for is for be­hav­iour to be treat­ed. The stu­dents to be giv­en rel­e­vant sup­port so that they can be­come func­tion­ing mem­bers of so­ci­ety. What we would like to do is to call for col­lab­o­ra­tive in­ter­ven­tion, and col­lab­o­ra­tive in­ter­ven­tion would in­volve the par­ents, would in­volve the ed­u­ca­tors, the so­cial work­ers, men­tal health pro­fes­sion­als, psy­chol­o­gists, so­ci­ol­o­gists. We want these peo­ple to get in­volved in the process so that the child is not on­ly ex­pelled and put out there and then have to fend for their own.”

He added, “Some teach­ers are a bit more men­tal­ly and emo­tion­al­ly strong and some can­not un­der­stand and adapt to this kind of be­hav­iour.”

He said in re­cent times, on­ly two stu­dents have been ex­pelled, in­clud­ing the re­cent case of Siparia East Sec­ondary stu­dent Tre­vieann Ray­mond, af­ter a video of her ver­bal­ly abus­ing her teacher went vi­ral.

The oth­er ex­pul­sion in­volved a stab­bing in­ci­dent at an­oth­er sec­ondary school.

How­ev­er, Con­cerned Par­ent Move­ment TT pres­i­dent Clarence Men­doza said there are in­stances where stu­dents are hav­ing sex in the bath­rooms and oth­ers are smok­ing drugs in the class­room as well.

While ac­tions like these may jus­ti­fy ex­pul­sion, he said he be­lieves there needs to be re­ha­bil­i­ta­tive mea­sures im­ple­ment­ed for stu­dents to im­prove their be­hav­iours.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Men­doza said, “We are see­ing where chil­dren are en­gag­ing in sex­u­al ac­tiv­i­ty, and some may get ex­pelled while oth­ers may get on­ly sev­en days... There are cas­es tak­ing place now in sec­ondary schools where prin­ci­pals are hold­ing back. I don’t even be­lieve the SS3s (school su­per­vi­sor 3) are aware of what’s tak­ing place in some of these schools that re­al­ly needs to be dealt with.”

He said some schools pre­fer to take on the ap­proach of “han­dling the sit­u­a­tion on their own” in­stead of re­port­ing it to the min­istry, but in most cas­es, this has on­ly re­sult­ed in stu­dents’ be­hav­iour wors­en­ing.

Men­doza said most so­cial work­ers and guid­ance of­fi­cers can­not han­dle the bulk of cas­es com­ing their way any­more. He rec­om­mend­ed that the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry im­ple­ment a manda­to­ry drug test­ing pol­i­cy for delin­quent stu­dents and in­tro­duce tru­an­cy of­fi­cers at schools.

Al­so speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, sev­er­al teach­ers who wished to re­main anony­mous said ex­pul­sion is usu­al­ly the last re­sort.

One teacher from the North East dis­trict al­so said there has been an in­crease in school dropouts be­cause of stu­dents be­ing placed on ex­tend­ed sus­pen­sion, which could go for a max­i­mum of 21 days.

The teacher said, “Based on the min­istry’s new re­form pol­i­cy, it’s usu­al­ly three sus­pen­sions be­fore a stu­dent can be ex­pelled. That would usu­al­ly be the last re­sort. We have a lot of cas­es in sev­er­al schools where a stu­dent is a first-time of­fend­er, so they get two to three days’ sus­pen­sion. When it hap­pens again, they get a max­i­mum of sev­en days. How­ev­er, many chil­dren, es­pe­cial­ly if their par­ents are not in­volved or not will­ing to come in school and see what’s re­al­ly go­ing on, they (stu­dents) drop out and don’t come back. So even be­fore they can get ex­pelled, they drop out. Most times, when you do the checks these stu­dents have do­mes­tic is­sues at home, come from pover­ty and so on.”

She added, “I don’t think get­ting ex­pelled will make a dif­fer­ence for these stu­dents, un­less they make it manda­to­ry to send them Mi­LAT (Mil­i­tary-Led Aca­d­e­m­ic Train­ing Pro­gramme) or some­thing.”