The Ministry of Education (MoE) has set up a committee to look into the issue of safe school environments in the wake of several student, teacher, and parent confrontations, some of which escalated into violence.
Minister of Education Priya Manickchand told Stabroek News that since the matter of safe school environments needed to be addressed immediately, a special committee has been set up headed by Education Specialist Olato Sam. The committee, she expanded, “… has to report to me in two weeks…” That broad-based report will allow the ministry to look at what is currently in place as regards safety and security and the maintenance of discipline in schools, she added.
Guyana has seen rising levels of school violence between students and teachers and sometimes, parents. Recent incidents include an attack on a teacher by a parent at Graham’s Hall Primary School, East Coast Demerara; and a similar attack by a parent on a teacher at Winfer Gardens Primary School, Georgetown. In both cases the perpetrators were charged and placed before the court.
Other instances of school violence include an attack on a student by a gang armed with scissors, wood and a knife at Harmony Secondary School, Wismar, Linden and at the Lodge Secondary and Campbellville Secondary schools in the city, where armed intruders, accompanied by students, invaded the schools’ compounds and attacked both teachers and students. At Houston Secondary School, an altercation between a student and a teacher escalated with the interjection of a parent. In this instance, the teacher armed herself with a cutlass. Several of these events were filmed and posted on social media. One educator has referred to the violence as the ‘new Covid’.
Protest actions followed several of these altercations and saw teachers, parents and students voicing frustration at the lack of safe school environments. They pointed to a number of security gaps. These include no proper security. In some instances, they said, there are single unarmed guards who are unable to provide any form of protection against intrusions. They also cited inadequate fences at schools, which render them vulnerable to intruders.
Manickchand said her ministry had heard the cries of teachers and students and was responding by developing a countrywide security policy for schools. “We are looking at what the current policy is. Every region and every school seems to be [querying] how does law enforcement deal with these incidents? People seem to be unclear about what are the protocols and how they should be applied universally and so that is something we want to ensure that we are all clear about… that if x were to happen what will be our first and second responses,” Manickchand said.
“So, we are looking at what we have as far as policy, whether it’s still relevant, whether it’s outdated. If we want to update, what do we want to update? We are not doing that alone, we are looking at it at the inter-ministerial level, but we want to also look at it from the perspective of stakeholders in the wider society.”
She further explained that the new policy, while emphasising student discipline, will also focus on schools’ safety environment in its entirety. “Discipline in school has been interpreted overtime to mean how we discipline children, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about how we keep our environment safe. We want to look at that with all the stakeholders, carefully and quickly,” she stressed.
While such a policy is being created, Manickchand insisted that all must play a role in ensuring that the tone of violence is kept low. “We have to dial down on the language of violence across the society, regardless of where it’s coming from, and in relation to what. So, there were a lot of funny jokes about how teachers will defend themselves and that went too far in one instance, where no defence was apparently necessary. So, we have to be very careful if we want to look at this holistically,” she said.
There is no clear deadline as to the formulation of a new policy, and Manickchand did not want to say what the policy should be, but instead to allow that to evolve from the input of all stakeholders.
