.jpg)
The Education Chief made these disclosures to the Guyana Chronicle, in an invited comment, following the stabbing of 13-year-old second former Shane Hackett of Dolphin Government Secondary School by a fellow student on January 22.
A confrontation which started in the school minutes before noon, developed into a vicious criminal assault on the victim outside the school compound, during which he was stabbed in the back by his aggressor, allegedly with a pair of scissors. As a result, Hackett suffered a puncture to his left lung and was hospitalized for about one week, but is now at home recovering from his injuries.
“Though I am not convinced that there’s an upsurge … as you implied, we do have issues and we’re actively engaging the people who are tasked to deal with it, and are getting some assistance from teachers and other individuals, even outside of the Ministry,” the Education Chief said.
“We have increased the number of schools’ welfare officers and guidance counsellors in the system, with a view to not only reacting to some of these situations, but going into schools and doing mentoring to students who need it. We are actively addressing all of these issues and being a bit more proactive in the way that we deal with these misdemeanours in our school environment,” he explained.
However, having analytically assessed the situation, Mr. Sam conceded, “I think the evidence in our schools really suggests that part of what we are experiencing really has connection with communities our young people are living in; that it has connections to some of their social structures generally, that go well beyond the school environment and the school itself.”
For this reason, he is of the view that if the education system is going to have a real impact on violence, it will have to involve the participation of other key stakeholders such as the Ministry of Social Services and the Ministry of Home Affairs.
Citing systems already put in place by the Ministry of Education, to indicate that a very serious proactive approach is being taken to deal with the problem of violence in schools, the Education Chief pointed out: “We have increased the number of schools’ welfare officers and guidance counsellors in the system, with a view to not only reacting to some of these situations but going into schools and doing mentoring to students who need it.”
“We have a very vibrant mentorship programme that’s being expanded. We are doing psychosocial counselling for a number of these young people, and their parents.” That, he said, is to be done on a more massive scale over the next two terms.
Additionally, the CEO said, the Ministry is doing an evaluation – the history of behaviour in schools to identify students who might need more intervention. “So there’s a whole range of things that are being done,” he told the Guyana Chronicle.
He said that the Ministry of Education is not into advertising these things, since they’re [the interventions] all part and parcel of some of their everyday functions.
He is hopeful, however, that with time the ministry would get well on top of the situation given their current and ongoing programmes, based on bringing about positive behaviour change on the part of students inclined towards violence.
