Quite what possessed the authorities at the Santa Rosa Secondary School to strip search female students in relation to the matter of a missing sum of money is unclear.
Even without us being in possession of all of the details, the incident itself conjures up some pretty unwholesome images and creates an altogether unflattering sense of the manner in which our school system is administered. An apology to the parents of the children should come from no less a functionary than the Chief Education Officer; it should be in the form of written communication and it should be delivered by a suitably senior functionary in the Ministry of Education. That would be a fitting way for the ministry to give real expression to its regret in the matter. It would, simultaneously, be sending a message that the ministry is now ready to turn a corner in what has been for some time now a dysfunctional relationship between school and parent. That, however, would not be enough. Indeed, we must ask ourselves whether such an occurrence at a George-town school or at a school in most parts of coastal Guyana might not have given rise to some form of public protest.
Questions arise from the incident and the Ministry of Education must be required to answer those questions. One might ask, for example, whether there isn’t a disciplinary code that applies to the national school system as a whole and whether such an instrument does not include guidelines for the handling of incidents like the one that led to the searching of the girls, and whether such guidelines and procedures – assuming that they exist – ought not to have been known to the administrators of the Santa Rosa Secondary School and ought not to have been applied.
If guidelines for handling situations such as this exist, then the Ministry of Education must tell us whether there is a penalty for flouting those guidelines, and whether it will be applied in this instance. If there are no such guidelines we need to be told whether such lessons as might be learnt from this incident will indeed be learnt and whether corrective action will be taken.
There have been some worrisome instances of departure from expected practice (like the 2013 incident where students from the Kato Primary School in Region 8 were required to fetch to the school wood used in the preparation of meals under the School Feeding Programme) in the school system in interior regions. And as in the recent Santa Rosa instance one wonders whether we are in fact witnessing a falling off of adherence to standard rules and practices in those parts of the country where direct ministry oversight poses greater institutional challenges. Or might it be that some of the glitches that occur are a function of schools in interior regions being run, in some instances, by less experienced teachers who may not be aware of all of the various rules and regulations governing discipline?
It is apposite to note, we believe, that there has been, over the past sixteen months or so, significant leadership changes at the Ministry of Education at both the political and professional levels. One wonders whether in both instances newness ought not to give rise to a healthy measure of introspection that might, for example, result in a revamping of the rules and regulations associated with discipline, some of which, manifestly, do not appear to be working.
We believe too that the Santa Rosa incident and its outcomes give rise, once again, to the need to emphasize the importance of a far more efficient regime of relations between the school and the parent – that is to say a more robust Parent-Teacher Association structure across the school system. A better understanding between school and home can help to give greater meaning to the disciplinary code.
Over the years, the Ministry of Education has not done nearly as much as it could have to prevent the repetition of altogether avoidable unwholesome incidents in schools, the ‘strip search’ occurrence being just one example. It is a reflection of what, all too often, appears to be an assumption on the part of state agencies that somehow, there is no nexus between transgression and accountability or at least, that accountability does not apply to them. Beyond the apology to the parents, a genuine true expression of the Ministry of Education’s regret over the Santa Rosa incident would best be reflected in its speedy implementation of measures that guard against repetition anywhere else in the school system.
