Parents urge care, understanding as students return to classrooms

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

Par­ents across St Au­gus­tine and Tu­na­puna ac­com­pa­nied their chil­dren to school on Mon­day, of­fer­ing en­cour­age­ment and ad­vice as the new aca­d­e­m­ic term be­gan.

From as ear­ly as 6 am, par­ents were seen walk­ing chil­dren to school, tak­ing pho­tographs and shar­ing fi­nal words of re­as­sur­ance be­fore class­es got un­der­way.

Out­side St Au­gus­tine Sec­ondary School on Gor­don Street, proud fa­ther Ni­raz Goolchan re­flect­ed on the chal­lenges his son, So­mari Sama­roo, had over­come be­fore start­ing Form One.

Goolchan said the 13-year-old sur­vived a se­ri­ous road ac­ci­dent last year, af­ter a ve­hi­cle veered off the road and struck him while he was play­ing.

“It rolled over and crushed his foot,” Goolchan re­called.

“He was out for about a year, which is why his pri­ma­ry school kept him back in Stan­dard Four. He re­al­ly fought through it and bounced back well. When he got to Stan­dard Five, he be­came more fo­cused on his school­work and did re­al­ly well to be where he is to­day.”

Al­though the dri­ver fled the scene and was nev­er iden­ti­fied, Goolchan said he was grate­ful his son had re­cov­ered suf­fi­cient­ly to be­gin sec­ondary school.

“I’m more ner­vous than him, I feel,” he joked.

He al­so en­cour­aged par­ents to re­main ac­tive­ly in­volved in their chil­dren’s lives, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing ma­jor tran­si­tions such as the move to sec­ondary school.

“Fo­cus on your chil­dren. Their fu­ture is ahead of them. Don’t over-pres­sure them, but pay at­ten­tion to them and sup­port them.”

While traf­fic ap­peared lighter than ex­pect­ed on yes­ter­day morn­ing, Goolchan said avoid­ing con­ges­tion re­quired an ear­li­er start to the day.

An­oth­er St Au­gus­tine Sec­ondary par­ent, Michael George, said he was proud to see his son be­gin Form One.

While ex­cit­ed about the op­por­tu­ni­ties ahead, George said he had al­so used the jour­ney to school to re­mind his son about mak­ing wise choic­es.

“I feel like a proud fa­ther. Be­ing here brought back mem­o­ries of when I start­ed sec­ondary school my­self.

“I was giv­ing him the dos and don’ts. Trou­ble can be easy to get in­to. He’s small and just start­ing out, so I told him to stick with the chil­dren in his class and, over time, he’ll be­come more com­fort­able.”

George’s wife, Madon­na, urged par­ents to re­main sup­port­ive and in­volved in their chil­dren’s ed­u­ca­tion.

“Just en­cour­age your chil­dren, work with them and check on them of­ten,” she said.

“I told my son to stay in his cor­ner, make a few friends and avoid the spot­light. We don’t need the spot­light.”

Sim­i­lar scenes un­fold­ed at Lak­sh­mi Girls’ Hin­du Col­lege along the East­ern Main Road, where par­ents took pho­tographs be­fore stu­dents joined friends on the school com­pound.

One moth­er, Vali­ni Ram­lakhan, said she ex­pe­ri­enced mixed emo­tions as her daugh­ter, Ama­ra Be­tan, be­gan sec­ondary school.

“It was a lit­tle scary be­cause it’s a new school. It feels like we’re start­ing all over again with the first day of school, but she made us re­al­ly proud with her SEA per­for­mance.”

Ram­lakhan en­cour­aged par­ents to help in­stil pos­i­tive val­ues in their chil­dren.

“Keep talk­ing to your chil­dren. Say your prayers and con­tin­ue be­ing there for them. En­cour­age them to be kind and sup­port­ive of oth­ers.”

She said traf­fic con­di­tions were bet­ter than ex­pect­ed, al­though ve­hi­cles slowed con­sid­er­ably out­side the school around 7.45 am as par­ents con­tin­ued drop­ping off stu­dents.

At Tu­na­puna Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry School on Payne Lane, stu­dents as­sem­bled in the court­yard while par­ents gath­ered along the fence, of­fer­ing last-minute words of en­cour­age­ment.

Lester George, whose son is en­ter­ing Stan­dard Five, said the aca­d­e­m­ic de­mands as­so­ci­at­ed with next year’s Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) would soon be­come more pro­nounced.

“This is where things start. Mov­ing from Stan­dard Four to Stan­dard Five brings greater aware­ness and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. This is ba­si­cal­ly de­ci­sion-mak­ing sea­son.

“It’s a lit­tle nerve-rack­ing. The work gets hard­er and every­thing re­quires a greater ef­fort, so we just have to con­tin­ue sup­port­ing him.”

George al­so en­cour­aged par­ents of SEA pupils to lead by ex­am­ple.

“They are the fu­ture. If I’m bad, they will be bad. We have to do what we need to do as par­ents.”

Act­ing prin­ci­pal of Tu­na­puna Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry School, Sher­pa Hanooman, said staff were look­ing for­ward to the new aca­d­e­m­ic year. He al­so stressed the im­por­tance of strong col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween par­ents and teach­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly for chil­dren en­ter­ing the pri­ma­ry school sys­tem from preschool.

“It’s a big change from preschool. There are new rou­tines and it’s a big­ger en­vi­ron­ment,” Hanooman said.

“Dur­ing our ori­en­ta­tion ex­er­cis­es, we pro­vid­ed par­ents with a lot of in­for­ma­tion about what to ex­pect and the role they play. It’s im­por­tant that they part­ner with us rather than op­pose us. Par­ents must al­so know where to draw the line be­tween be­ing a par­ent and be­ing a friend.”

Hanooman added that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 60 per cent of the school’s most re­cent SEA co­hort se­cured place­ment at one of their pre­ferred sec­ondary schools.