Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Chief Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer (CEO) Dr Pe­ter Smith says a mer­it/de­mer­it point sys­tem is be­ing pro­posed by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to help com­bat school in­dis­ci­pline and vi­o­lence. Speak­ing dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence at the min­istry’s Port-of-Spain head­quar­ters yes­ter­day, Dr Smith said in­ci­dents of vi­o­lence were plagu­ing rough­ly five per cent of the coun­try’s 820 schools. How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted that the in­ci­dents they had seen broad­cast over tra­di­tion­al and so­cial me­dia are con­cern­ing.

There were sev­er­al in­ci­dents of school vi­o­lence short­ly af­ter the re­turn of stu­dents to phys­i­cal class­es on April 19.

In re­sponse, Dr Smith said a mul­ti-sec­toral com­mit­tee was set up and charged with draft­ing a school dis­ci­pline ma­trix out­lin­ing in­frac­tions and so­lu­tions to curb such in­ci­dents. The com­mit­tee hand­ed in the doc­u­ment re­cent­ly and among the pro­posed ac­tion for in­dis­ci­plined and well-be­haved stu­dents is a de­mer­it/mer­it point-based sys­tem.

“Ba­si­cal­ly, what it looks at, in some in­stances, re­ward­ing stu­dents for pos­i­tive be­hav­iour and oth­er in­stances they are giv­en de­mer­it points for un­ac­cept­able be­hav­iours and that’s the gist of it,” Smith said. 
Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly not­ed that the sys­tem is not a nov­el one and cur­rent­ly ex­ists at many schools.

“I re­mem­ber when I was a stu­dent at SAGHS (St Au­gus­tine Girls’ High School), we had com­men­da­tion and or­der marks. So you were three times late, you got an or­der mark and so you did your best not to get an or­der mark and that kept you in line and dis­ci­plined,” she said.
“It’s the same type of sys­tem, so it’s not a new thing. It’s some­thing that ex­ists in schools and the pos­si­bil­i­ty is whether we can use it at all schools and it’s some­thing that the stake­hold­ers will al­so be com­ment­ing on.”

Dr Smith said 19 ar­eas were iden­ti­fied to de­ter­mine if schools need­ed greater at­ten­tion to ad­dress­ing their con­cerns. 
Com­par­ing da­ta from 2018/2019 ver­sus 2021/2022, he said the com­mon per­pe­tra­tors of school in­dis­ci­pline were a younger de­mo­graph­ic, with 54 per cent of in­ci­dents oc­cur­ring at the hands of Form 1 (27 per cent) and Form 2 (27 per cent) stu­dents.

In the year iden­ti­fied pri­or, it was stu­dents in From 2 (25 per cent) and Form 3 (23 per cent). 
He said the most com­mon in­frac­tions stu­dents en­gaged in were fights (with and with­out weapons), sex­u­al mis­con­duct, drug pos­ses­sion, drug use, use of to­bac­co and va­p­ing prod­ucts, dis­re­spect and de­fi­ance of au­thor­i­ty.

The Chief Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer said the da­ta al­so shows an in­crease in these acts be­ing com­mit­ted dur­ing the lunchtime pe­ri­od. He said the fre­quen­cy went from 19 per cent in 2018/2019 to 34 per cent in 2021/2022. He said these fig­ures were switched when it came to the in­ci­dents be­ing per­pe­trat­ed dur­ing class­es.

He said the oc­cur­rence of these acts dur­ing break time al­so de­creased. 
He not­ed that males re­ceived sus­pen­sion no­tices for the year pe­ri­ods un­der re­view. 
Dr Smith said a meet­ing with prin­ci­pals of par­tic­u­lar­ly af­flict­ed schools has been card­ed for June 9 to ad­dress chal­lenges and pro­vide any nec­es­sary re­sources, such as safe­ty of­fi­cers, full or in­creased com­ple­ment of se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers, ded­i­cat­ed coun­sel­lors, school so­cial work­ers and spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion in­struc­tors.

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