Trouble in schools

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath says while progress has been made in re­duc­ing dis­rup­tions out­side the class­room, trou­bling new da­ta shows be­hav­iour­al is­sues are in­creas­ing­ly oc­cur­ring dur­ing in­struc­tion­al time.

He has de­scribed the shift in schools across the coun­try as crit­i­cal, prompt­ing re­vi­sions to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s Na­tion­al School Code of Con­duct (NSCC).

“The most im­por­tant thing we are look­ing at is to guard in­struc­tion­al time, to use as many mea­sures as pos­si­ble to max­imise stu­dents’ time in the class­room. What we need is a dis­ci­plined class­room,” Dr Dowlath said yes­ter­day, dur­ing the launch of the up­dat­ed at the min­istry’s head of­fice in Port-of-Spain.

Dr Dowlath first high­light­ed ar­eas of im­prove­ment.

“In our school-ori­ent­ed po­lice of­fi­cer eval­u­a­tion pro­gramme for Term One of the 2025/2026 aca­d­e­m­ic year, we ob­served some­thing in­struc­tive. Sus­pen­sions dur­ing lunchtime de­clined by ap­prox­i­mate­ly 15 per cent, and sus­pen­sions af­ter school de­clined by rough­ly 25 per cent,” he said.

How­ev­er, he re­vealed that class­room in­ci­dents have in­creased.

“In­ci­dents dur­ing class time, with a mem­ber of staff present, rose from 401 to 544. This tells us that while su­per­vi­sion out­side the class­room has im­proved, be­hav­iour­al pres­sure has shift­ed in­to the class­room, which di­rect­ly im­pacts teach­ing qual­i­ty,” Dowlath ex­plained.

He stressed that the de­vel­op­ment could not be ig­nored.

“If in­ci­dents are now oc­cur­ring more fre­quent­ly dur­ing in­struc­tion­al time, then class­room man­age­ment be­comes cen­tral to our re­form agen­da,” he said.

Dowlath said the re­vised code places the pro­tec­tion of in­struc­tion­al time at its core, de­scrib­ing it as “not mere­ly a be­hav­iour­al frame­work, it is an aca­d­e­m­ic re­form tool.”

He al­so high­light­ed that a re­cent sur­vey flagged bul­ly­ing as a ma­jor con­cern among stu­dents, along with va­p­ing, re­in­forc­ing the need for an up­dat­ed frame­work.

“In 2024, the min­istry con­duct­ed a cli­mate sur­vey in all schools. Bul­ly­ing and va­p­ing were iden­ti­fied as ma­jor is­sues. These num­bers are not ab­stract sta­tis­tics—each in­ci­dent rep­re­sents a dis­rupt­ed class­room, a teacher di­vert­ed from in­struc­tion, stu­dents pulled away from learn­ing, and a school cli­mate af­fect­ed. We can­not im­prove lit­er­a­cy, nu­mer­a­cy, or ex­am­i­na­tion per­for­mance with­out con­fronting this re­al­i­ty. The code re­quired re­vi­sion be­cause the da­ta de­mand­ed it,” he said.

He said a fur­ther eval­u­a­tion of the School-ori­ent­ed Polic­ing Pro­gramme for Term One (2025-2026) showed that na­tion­al sus­pen­sions in­creased from 2,659 to 3,005. How­ev­er, in the 51 high­est-risk schools where per­ma­nent po­lice of­fi­cers are sta­tioned, he said sus­pen­sion num­bers re­mained sta­ble.

“Vi­o­lent-re­lat­ed sus­pen­sions de­clined mod­est­ly in those schools (with po­lice of­fi­cers). The share of na­tion­al sus­pen­sions at­trib­uted to high-risk schools with po­lice of­fi­cers fell from 80.4 per cent to 71.4 per cent,” Dowlath said.

Po­lice de­ploy­ment in schools was in­tro­duced by the Gov­ern­ment last year to se­cure a safe learn­ing en­vi­ron­ment amid ris­ing in­ci­dents of in­dis­ci­pline and vi­o­lence with­in the na­tion­al school pop­u­la­tion.

The min­is­ter said the up­dat­ed NSCC re­in­forced the min­istry’s ze­ro-tol­er­ance stance on sex­u­al mis­con­duct, gang vi­o­lence and in­dis­ci­pline, but stressed that en­force­ment alone was in­suf­fi­cient.

“Every se­ri­ous mea­sure must be pro­por­tion­ate, age-ap­pro­pri­ate and legal­ly com­pli­ant, in the best in­ter­est of the child. Dis­ci­pline must nev­er be vi­o­lence. “Ac­count­abil­i­ty and com­pas­sion are not op­pos­ing forces—they must co­ex­ist. The in­tro­duc­tion of school-ori­ent­ed po­lice of­fi­cers was ev­i­dence-dri­ven,” he said.

Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Ju­nior Ben­jamin, who heads the School-ori­ent­ed Polic­ing Pro­gramme, con­firmed that po­lice will re­main sta­tioned at schools as long as nec­es­sary.

“The of­fi­cers are go­ing to be there for as long as they need to be. The aim is to en­sure a safe and con­sis­tent en­vi­ron­ment where stu­dents can feel com­fort­able to learn and not be in­volved in vi­o­lence,” he said.

When asked about ex­pand­ing the pro­gramme to ad­di­tion­al schools, DCP Ben­jamin said the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice will work with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to de­ter­mine the way for­ward. He added that no po­lice of­fi­cers have been at­tacked by stu­dents since de­ploy­ment.

Dowlath al­so con­firmed that the NSCC in­cludes guide­lines on the school dress code pol­i­cy.

Re­spond­ing to the da­ta yes­ter­day, Na­tion­al Par­ent-Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Wal­ter Stew­art de­scribed the rise in class­room be­hav­iour­al is­sues as deeply con­cern­ing.

“While it is en­cour­ag­ing that dis­rup­tions out­side the class­room are re­duc­ing, the in­crease in be­hav­iour­al is­sues dur­ing in­struc­tion­al time sends a trou­bling sig­nal,” he said, not­ing that in­struc­tion­al time is crit­i­cal to cur­ricu­lum de­liv­ery, stu­dent learn­ing and over­all aca­d­e­m­ic progress.

Stew­art praised schools with calm, or­der­ly class­room en­vi­ron­ments, at­tribut­ing their suc­cess to years of in­ten­tion­al ef­fort, clear ex­pec­ta­tions and con­sis­tent en­force­ment. He called for strength­ened sup­port sys­tems, in­clud­ing greater parental en­gage­ment.

“Col­lab­o­ra­tion among school ad­min­is­tra­tion, teach­ers, par­ents, and stu­dents is nec­es­sary to fos­ter pos­i­tive class­room be­hav­iour,” Stew­art said.

Mean­while, Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent Crys­tal Ashe said while he could not ver­i­fy the min­is­ter’s sta­tis­tics, he was sup­port­ive of any mea­sures that could min­imise class­room dis­rup­tions.

“We do not con­done any type of de­viant be­hav­iour by stu­dents and wel­come any mea­sures that would re­duce such in­ci­dents,” Ashe said.