By Emmanuel Joseph
Education figures will meet in an emergency session on Thursday to discuss violence in schools, as the authorities probe a second, vicious, student-on-student attack that has left a peace-making child battling serious head injuries.
The meeting has been summoned by the ministry for its Constitution Road headquarters at 2 p.m., Barbados TODAY has learned.
The gathering comes on the heels of an attack that occurred near Six Roads around 2 p.m. on Tuesday – but has only now come to light.
In that attack, a student was hit in the head as he tried to stop an apparent case of bullying. The would-be peacemaker was involved in an anti-bullying programme, as a frustrated counsellor acknowledged that the ministry’s efforts to stem the violence appear to be failing.
News of the incident was announced on Wednesday by the ministry following two stabbings, also on Tuesday, that involved Parkinson Memorial Secondary School boys, one of whom was in serious condition when he was stabbed in his abdomen a stone’s throw away from their Pine classrooms. Several of the students in the melee were suspended as a probe continued into the circumstances in which another student received superficial cuts to his hand.
The other attack happened near the Princess Margaret Secondary School at Six Roads, St Philip during the mid-afternoon.
“Efforts by a fifth former to intervene in an apparent case of bullying were met with the student sustaining a serious head injury. He was initially treated at a nearby polyclinic, but subsequent complications led to him being transported to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital by ambulance, where he is still being monitored,” the ministry said.
“The incident happened off campus . . . sometime after students had been dismissed early for the day due to the negative impact of smoke emanating from a nearby location. The police, principal and other school administrators went to the scene, where two male students were identified as the attackers. While the Ministry of Education, Technological and Vocational Training awaits further updates on the condition of the young student, it joins the nation in appealing for an end to the pockets of violence rearing its head among the school population.”
The ministry said it will also provide the space for the principal, the Board of Management, and The Barbados Police Service to continue their investigation and make the appropriate decision about the fate of the two boys involved in the fight.
It said that over the last three years, it has increased the number of officers offering psycho-social support in both primary and secondary schools across the island.
The ministry pointed out that the increase in staff was a direct response to the many challenges students face which impact on their ability to function effectively in school.
“As such, the staff complement of the Ministry’s Student Support Services Unit increased from 12 to 33 persons between November 2020 to present. Included in the increase are seven primary school social workers, seven secondary school counsellors and six school safety officers who work assiduously alongside other school personnel to deal with the social, emotional, behavioural and, or mental health concerns that identified students may face,” it said.
There are also 33 student support officers attached to the ministry, six primary school counsellors provided through a partnership with the Sandy Lane Charitable Trust and 26 guidance counsellors at secondary schools.
The ministry disclosed that last year, 3 891 students received counselling interventions from student support officers – 2 523 primary and 1 368 secondary. Another 497 social and emotional skills groups were facilitated – 349 in primary schools and 148 in secondary schools.
“Some of the areas addressed include anger management, dealing with emotions, problem-solving, goal setting, and conflict resolution,” it said.
As recently as February 24 this year, the ministry added, 225 parents and students participated in a ministry-led initiative that sought to enhance parenting skills.
The ministry gave an assurance that it will continue to work with all the relevant stakeholders to deal with the challenge of violence in and around schools.
But a private counsellor who counselled the traumatised Princess Margaret students Wednesday morning pulled no punches in his assessment of efforts to get to the bottom of the ongoing violence among students.
Chief Executive Officer of Supreme Counselling for Personal Development Shawn Clarke, who revealed that the boy who was seriously injured in the head is in his programme, contended that the measures being put in place in schools are not working.
“As a society, we are failing to see the real psycho-social needs of our young people, and to put systems in place to address the psycho-social development of our young people,” the prominent counsellor told Barbados TODAY.
He was also highly critical of the practice of suspending undisciplined children from school in the way it is currently done.
“The reality again is suspending our children from school . . . without any serious level of intervention for the level of behaviour they are exhibiting, is basically a waste of time,” the founder of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Programme declared.
He argued that children are being sent home for 10 days for delinquency without being referred to an agency that can assist them in their behaviours. These same students, he said, return to school, “spend two days in school, commit a similar offence, and are back home again”.
“One of the problems, to my mind, is that we are not seriously addressing what is happening to our young people. We are not looking at the real effect that it is having, and the real problems that our young people are going through,” Clarke suggested.
The social worker queried whether the young people were truly angry or instead, displaying a mask for depression, anxiety, sadness and loneliness. “The only way that we are going to be able to know what is happening, is if you put the systems in place to assess our children, to really, really get to the root causes of these behaviours,” he said.
Parent advocate Paula Anne-Moore praised the boy who tried to be a peacemaker.
“Sadly, that is a cautionary tale as these days are funny nights,” she told Barbados TODAY. “We are certain that the ministry has promptly deployed the specialist child and adult psychologists needed to give essential counselling support. We parents need to do our part, and too many of us do not live up to our parental responsibilities. But it is clear that many of us also genuinely need additional support in order to parent properly. Schools reflect our family, communities and society challenges. Challenges in the community will manifest in school.”
emmanueljoseph@barbadostoday.bb
