Indiscipline among students is one of the issues on the front burner when the Ministry of Education holds two national consultations this month—one in Trinidad on February 15 and the other in Tobago on February 22—to discuss a range of school-related issues, including the curriculum and the Concordat.
There are many issues plaguing schools in T&T—bullying, sexual misconduct, peer pressure, physical violence. The issue of indiscipline and violence has become a runaway horse, videos of students fighting in classrooms, on the streets and even with a police officer and MTS security guards have gone viral.
Over a week ago, there were reports of two separate incidents at two schools in south Trinidad where teenaged school girls were sexually assaulted in their classes by their peers.
Fights among young boys which end up in serious injury and in one case in 2013, young Renaldo Dixon, a student of Waterloo Secondary School, was stabbed to death on the school compound by a peer over a girl.
There was even an incident at the Chaguanas North Secondary School involving students who threw firecrackers into a classroom while teachers were there.
According to the Ministry of Education, 3,300 students were suspended in the period 2009-2010 and in 2012, 2,200 students were suspended. Former education minister Dr Tim Gopeesingh said 700 of those students had to have extended suspensions.
And the mayhem continues in spite of the $400 to $500 million spent annually in the last four years to curb indiscipline and school violence—a total of $1.6 to $2 billion over the last four years.
In fact, authorities have been grappling with the problem of indiscipline in schools for decades. In 1989 the then NAR government hosted the “National Consultation on Violence and Indiscipline in Schools.”
That consultation was jointly hosted by then education minister Clive Pantin and the then TTUTA president and now Education Minister Anthony Garcia.
The 1989 consultation resulted in the White Paper on Education, which went on to form the basis for education planning for both the NAR Government and subsequently the PNM Government. TTUTA President Devanand Sinanan told the GML Enterprise Desk that it was “such a good plan that it bridged the political divide.” While some of the recommendations were implemented, 26 years later the issue of indiscipline and violence in schools continue.
The 1989 report considered the education of parents crucial to the eradication of violence and indiscipline in schools and by extension the wider society. Educators remain convinced that parental guidance is critical to dealing with the problem.
The TTUTA president said: “The school violence that existed back then and now are different levels, with different dynamics. Because education is dynamic, and society is constantly changing, the needs of learners will also be changing and schools have to be able to respond.”
He opined that the issue of school violence and school indiscipline must be part of a holistic plan “to treat with the reconstruction of the social fabric of society.”
Sinanan said: “The behaviour in school is symptomatic of a deeper social reality that currently exists. We need to get to the root and the root is not located in the school.”
Sinanan said we have gotten it wrong because we have been treating it as if it’s isolated and unique to the school, rather than a societal problem.
He said because of the failure to build the social fabric, many young people “behave in a violent manner and treat with issues in a violent way.”
He was concerned that too many young people have “no respect for themselves or for others, they lack empathy, elements which are required for the creation of a just and equitable society that we envisage where all of us can enjoy the rights that are enshrined in the Constitution.”
Many of us, he said, cannot enjoy our constitutional rights because the violence goes from schools to the wider society and vice versa.
“Many of us cannot walk the streets or enjoy ownership of property, we live in fear that someone will snatch our valuables, trespass into our homes and violate our persons, as is the case with the girls assaulted at schools,” he said.
While schools do not create the problem, Sinanan said, schools were now being called upon to effect solutions to problems that lie beyond their realm and remit, but “it certainly does not have the resources to do it.”
“We cannot find that recipe to reconstruct the society without all institutions playing their rightful role. I am talking about the family, media, religious organisations, NGOs, various arms of the State, etc.”
According to Sinanan, we have been failed by the Judiciary, the Police Service and the Prison Service.
“They have not delivered what they should have done. All of them have contributed to the current state of affairs.”
He is optimistic that the national consultations will bring solutions and that a comprehensive national education plan would emerge “not just for five years, but for a longer period.”
Other education stakeholders are also optimistic that some tangible and workable solutions will emerge.
The Education Minister said he expected the consultations will “bring ideas to move forward.”
Garcia said “too many times we hear of indiscipline in schools and the teachers’ problems with the students. It must be brought to an end.”
He said there were many impediments which affect children in the classrooms, including bullying.
“There is evidence it has been reported that many students are being left unsupervised in our schools.
“We will be engaging behavioural psychologists qualified in the field to assist us.”
The minister is hoping that experts will attend and give their views at the consultations and that the ideas generated would help bring about some solutions to the ongoing problem.
Whatever happens in society will spill over into schools
—NPTA
Meanwhile, president of the National Parent Teacher Association Zena Ramathali told the GML Enterprise Desk the association has been meeting “to formulate a position paper for the consultation.”
She did not want to go into details but said that “as a key stakeholder in education the group is looking forward to a national dialogue on some of the issues impacting the education system, and some workable solutions.”
The first vice president of the NPTA, Maureen Taylor-Ryan, in assessing the situation, said very often “children who are violent in schools are simply playing out the reality of what they live.”
She said 50 per cent of those students who are described as “delinquent” really have other problems.
“They are very depressed, they live in communities where they witness violence, they are victims themselves, they live in single-parent homes. We need trauma centres dailyguardian06-february-2016
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Measures taken in 2015 to reduce school violence by then education minister Tim Gopeesingh included:
n Full complement of security officers for all schools
n Full complement of student support services which constitute guidance counsellors, guidance officers and school social workers with educational, behavioural and clinical psychologists
n Over 280 remedial teachers and close to 300 substitute teachers in primary and secondary schools
n Establishment of a Circle of Hope where students have a special session on a weekly basis where they speak with teachers on issues
n Implementation of a system where motivational speakers visit schools to have chats with children
n Formation of a Parenting Academy
n Security officers have two hand-held scanners in secondary schools
n Several schools have been installed with CCTV Cameras
Source: Ministry of Education 2015
About the consultations
Some of the major areas for discussion at the consultations will be the Education Act, the Concordat, infrastructural development and school maintenance, the Early Childhood Care and Education system, improving education service delivery, developing methods to encourage a closer involvement of parents in the education of their children and school indiscipline. Maximising the use of locally grown foods in the School Feeding Programme will also form part of the discussions.