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Former President David Granger has expressed alarm at the surge in school violence. In response to the crisis, he proposed a five-point approach to restore order in the public education system. Speaking on his weekly programme – The Public Interest – Mr. Granger felt confident that the rising rate of everyday violence such as challenging teachers’ authority, teacher-parent confrontations, and physical altercations between students can be curbed.
Mr. Granger bemoaned the recent assault of teachers of Graham’s Hall and St. Angela’s Primary Schools by parents and the fires at the North Ruimveldt, St George’s, Mabaruma and Christ Church Secondary Schools, which followed the precedent of the Queen’s College arson in 1997. School violence has arisen, in part, from the ‘Gaza’ and ‘Gully’ gangs – imports from Jamaica’s dancehall sub-culture – which infected schools and encouraged disorderly behaviour among some students. He spoke, also, of student suicides, even in élite schools, in the last decade.
The former President recommended the restoration of the APNU+AFC administration’s five-point approach to break out of the vortex of violence. This requires investment in teacher training aimed at ensuring that there will be no ‘untrained’ teachers in classrooms and that teachers should be better prepared to resolve rivalries and reduce violence.
Equally, innovative teaching techniques should be implemented to preserve schools as institutions of learning. Information and Communications Technology (ICT) should be seen as obligatory, not optional and the ‘one-laptop-per-teacher’ programme should be extended to all trainee teachers. ICT should be widely accessible, given students’ prolonged absence from classrooms during the pandemic and the need to deliver education over an extensive hinterland geographical space.
Infrastructure development should aim at replacing the century-old, wooden, former ‘church-schools’ some of which are unsafe and unequal to modern educational standards. Overcrowding is overbearing. Relocation to a ‘green belt’ away from congested inner city and urban centres – as exemplified by North Georgetown, Richard Ishmael and St. Joseph Secondary Schools and Queen’s College and the Cyril Potter College – should be extended.
The implementation of a ‘Uniform Code of Behaviour’, based on the Ministry of Education’s 2002 ‘Guidelines’ that proposed rules – for attendance, assignments, attitude, discipline, decorum, dress, punishment and managing relations among students and with staff – is an urgent necessity.
The former President urged the promotion of socially cohesive extra-curricular activities to foster respectful relations among students and stamp out violent anti-social behaviour.
