Keeping schools safe

THE ACTING chief education officer in the Ministry of Education, Aaron Ramrattan, believes there is no need for police in schools since there is no evidence of criminal gangs.

Also, National Maintenance, Training and Security officers are on duty at schools to handle issues that arise.

Mr Ramrattan’s report to the Parliament's Social Services and Public Administration Joint Select Committee on November 27 revealed that between 2022 and 2024 there were 77 reports of bullying in primary and 470 in secondary schools.

The next day, the National Security Minister told the Senate that “some of the violent gangs, predominantly along the east-west corridor and south-central regions, (are) entrenched in the school system.”

Mr Ramrattan’s reluctance to deploy police in the school system is understandable. Uniformed officers send a powerful message, one that's rarely positive.

The school environment should be dedicated to education and learning. Fear of the police shouldn't be on the curriculum.

In 2022, the Education Minister suggested that defence force personnel might join community police officers at some schools to “socialise” students by serving as role models.

There is certainly a role for police in schools, bringing their expertise, for example, to situations in which drug use and experimentation are suspected in a school.

Anyone familiar with an environment with active bullies will understand that reported bullying incidents, decried as "snitching" in the school system, are always a small fraction of actual incidents.

School administrations can only respond to incidents that are reported to them. So, how can they improve confidence in reporting incidents and create systems that diminish bullies?

In 2022, the Student Support Services Division had 700 employees, and each school should have had a social worker and a guidance counsellor.

The Education Minister promised that this battalion of support professionals, nominally the first line of contact and response to bullying and school unrest, would also be an information-gathering system.

Comparisons of attendance and term grades were to provide information to monitor the social temperature of schools.

But there’s no indication that anything of the sort has ever happened.

There has certainly been no reporting, far less an analysis of the raw data Mr Ramrattan offered to the JSC last week. So, it’s unclear how the ministry will respond to the current situation.

A response is needed, and relying on MTS security officers untrained in student guidance won’t help.

The continuous analysis of promised data sets, faster identification of children at risk, and continuing sensitivity and response training for assigned guidance counsellors must be the way to go.