– following threats of destruction to the school

SCHOOL of the Nations on Sunday said it will be tightening security on campus amid threats of destruction from students over the past few days.

Addressing parents on Sunday, Nations Director, Dr Brian O’Toole said every threat has been taken seriously and countermeasures will be put in place.
“With the misery it caused in many people’s lives, it is too easy an excuse to say ‘I’m joking’, so we are not going to take situations like these lightly,” Dr. O’ Toole said.
On Monday (today), the school will roll-out a number of security measures.
Dr. O’ Toole said Delta security guards will be parading the compound and random bag searches will be conducted to ensure the school is weapons-free.
The gates of the school will no longer be open for vehicular traffic and police will be patrolling the school’s surroundings.

A meeting will also be held with Sixth Formers to ascertain who made a terrorist threat on Sunday. Information in this regard, Dr O’ Toole said, will be treated with strict confidence.
The directors of the top private school have also sought help from US cyber security at the highest level and the State Department, to track the origin of the threatening facebook post.
Only last week, a student of Nations was expelled after he threatened in a Whatsapp post to ‘shoot’ up the school. This matter has since been placed in the hands of the police.
Following the student’s expulsion on Friday, another person on Sunday took to facebook and made a threatening post to Sixth Formers of the school. The identity of the person who made the post is unknown.

At the meeting on Sunday, directors of the private school assured parents that all measures will be in place to ensure safety and security of their children.

Chief Education Officer Marcel Hutson, who was also present at the meeting, said the ministry is taking the reports of threats made by students seriously.

He disclosed that the ministry has put together a mobile unit comprising of counsellors and welfare officers, and their responsibility is to go into the schools and meet with students and teachers, and address their concerns.

“… that is how we intend to approach some of the particular ills and social problems we have in society. We cannot turn a blind eye on what is happening. At the end of the day, whether it is a public school or private school, they are children of this nation and we have a responsibility to ensure that our children fulfill their potential and that our children are accommodated and they are happy with their education process,” he said.
He also urged parents to monitor their children’s behaviour.

“Parents have a fundamental role to play in terms of discipline and order because that begins at home. It is not an issue for the school to teach discipline. We just can’t release them and forget that things are happening, especially when they are not behaving the way they are expected to behave. But at the same time, teachers ought to express some degree of flexibility because you sometimes have to be mothers, fathers, grandmothers, and so on. So we all have to do everything necessary to ensure that our children fulfill [their] potential in this land,” Hutson told the gathering.

The school will hold another meeting with parents today at 17:30 hrs.