Last year, when Jay­den Lalchan com­mit­ted sui­cide, there were the to­ken at­tempts to ad­dress the is­sue of bul­ly­ing in schools by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion (MoE).

Like al­most every­thing else, the up­roar against bul­ly­ing and vi­o­lence was short-lived and noth­ing changed. Lalchan’s sit­u­a­tion was just one out of about 550 cas­es of bul­ly­ing which were ac­tu­al­ly re­port­ed; there are more chil­dren who are bul­lied and who are afraid to re­port it.

By now, we should recog­nise that we have a na­tion­al cri­sis in our schools and that bul­ly­ing and oth­er forms of school vi­o­lence are not go­ing to dis­ap­pear un­less we ac­tu­al­ly do some­thing about it.

The re­cent an­nounce­ment by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar that the Gov­ern­ment “will treat every oc­cur­rence of as­sault or bat­tery as an ex­pellable of­fence in schools and an ar­restable of­fence to put be­fore the courts,” sig­ni­fies a change in gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy to­wards school vi­o­lence.

For the teach­ers who are fed up, the stu­dent vic­tims who are scared to at­tend school and the par­ents who are wor­ried for their chil­dren’s safe­ty, it is a wel­comed change in at­ti­tude. It sig­ni­fies a much-need­ed stronger stance against school vi­o­lence.

For too long, the MoE has been too soft in its ap­proach and the guide­lines set out in the Na­tion­al School Dis­ci­pline Ma­trix have shown to be in­ef­fec­tive. Tak­ing a firmer po­si­tion sends a clear mes­sage that vi­o­lence in any form against stu­dents and teach­ers will not be tol­er­at­ed. It is a mes­sage that should be sent loud and clear be­cause it is un­fair that many stu­dents are fo­cused on learn­ing but are made to feel un­safe be­cause of the ac­tions of a few stu­dents. By ex­pelling stu­dents en­gaged in vi­o­lent acts, schools can be what they are meant to be—a safe learn­ing en­vi­ron­ment.

At the same time, we need to ad­dress the root caus­es for stu­dents’ vi­o­lent be­hav­iour. Ex­pul­sion re­moves the stu­dent from the school en­vi­ron­ment, but we should al­so cre­ate op­tions for them to con­tin­ue to en­gage in vo­ca­tion­al and oth­er types of learn­ing ac­tiv­i­ties.

Ex­ist­ing pro­grammes such as the Mil­i­tary-Led Aca­d­e­m­ic Train­ing Pro­gramme (Mi­lat) should be au­dit­ed to de­ter­mine their suc­cess/fail­ure and up­dat­ed, ex­pand­ed, or re­placed so that both male and fe­male youths al­ways have op­tions for de­vel­op­ment.

More im­por­tant­ly, deal­ing with school vi­o­lence must start from the day a child is en­rolled in a school. We can­not wait for the ‘sit­u­a­tion to get bad’ and then try to deal with it. This would mean hav­ing guid­ance coun­sel­lors present in all schools.

This is one area where we need some se­ri­ous im­prove­ment–present­ly, one guid­ance coun­sel­lor serves three to four schools and school vis­its are in­fre­quent. We need a sys­tem in place which will track stu­dents’ be­hav­iour from ear­ly and pro­vide in­ter­ven­tion and sup­port. We need to teach con­flict res­o­lu­tion and to of­fer men­tor­ship pro­grammes.

In the US, the So­cial-emo­tion­al learn­ing (SEL) cur­ricu­lum em­pha­sis­es prob­lem-solv­ing, man­ag­ing emo­tions and teach­es em­pa­thy. These are im­por­tant as­pects of learn­ing which we can in­te­grate in­to our cur­ricu­lum. The No Trap! pro­gramme in Italy adopts a peer-led ap­proach, with peer men­tor­ship as a strate­gic way to deal with tra­di­tion­al and cy­ber­bul­ly­ing.

If our ap­proach­es here in T&T are not lead­ing to any sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion in school vi­o­lence, then it is a good idea to draw from suc­cess­ful pro­grammes used in oth­er coun­tries, which can then be tai­lored to our school cul­ture.

In the short term, we can en­gage stu­dents by cre­at­ing spaces for them to dis­cuss their feel­ings, to learn to deal with con­flict and to un­der­stand their emo­tions.

I re­mem­ber al­most 30 years ago when I taught at Mal­ick Sec­ondary Com­pre­hen­sive school, youths from the Youth Train­ing Cen­tre (YTC) were in­vit­ed to share their sto­ries with stu­dents. This is prob­a­bly one of the most un­der­rat­ed and un­der­utilised ap­proach­es to deal­ing with school vi­o­lence.

A dean or prin­ci­pal con­stant­ly telling a stu­dent to stop be­ing a bul­ly might “go through one ear and come back out the oth­er” but an­oth­er “bad boy/girl” telling their sto­ries of where and how he/she end­ed up in YTC will be heard at a dif­fer­ent lev­el. We need to talk to our stu­dents about school vi­o­lence and bul­ly­ing in a way that they would un­der­stand it.

As much as we say we should hold par­ents ac­count­able, we have to ac­cept that many par­ents have failed their chil­dren and some­times vi­o­lence is the on­ly thing the chil­dren know. Thus, when the child en­ters our schools, they must be giv­en the sup­port they need to do bet­ter than their par­ents.

Ex­pul­sion sends a clear mes­sage now and it is nec­es­sary in worst-case sce­nar­ios but, in the long term, we need to de­vel­op bet­ter struc­tures and pro­grammes.

That will on­ly hap­pen then there is the po­lit­i­cal will to do so. Deal­ing with school vi­o­lence must not be made in­to a racial or eth­nic is­sue. It has to be seen as a na­tion­al prob­lem and curb­ing it will strength­en the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem at a na­tion­al lev­el.

We know that every child has the right to an ed­u­ca­tion, but we need to make sure that every child has the right to an ed­u­ca­tion in a space where he/she is safe and sup­port­ed.