Schoolboys sorry for fighting at start of academic year

Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor–News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­[email protected]

Four stu­dents of North­east­ern Col­lege have pub­licly apol­o­gised for fight­ing on the very first day of the new aca­d­e­m­ic year last week.

But de­spite the apol­o­gy, the boys have been placed on ex­tend­ed sus­pen­sion fol­low­ing the fight out­side the school com­pound in San­gre Grande.

The stu­dents were ini­tial­ly sus­pend­ed for sev­en days and in­struct­ed to at­tend the San­gre Grande Sus­pen­sion Cen­tre, where they would take part in a youth de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme fo­cused on restora­tive prac­tices, re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and con­flict res­o­lu­tion.

A video sur­faced on­line yes­ter­day show­ing four boys with their faces blurred, apol­o­gis­ing for their be­hav­iour. One said, “We came to the youth de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme to learn about our ac­tions and our choic­es, and I just came to apol­o­gise for my ac­tions and for em­bar­rass­ing my school and my coun­try.”

How­ev­er, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath con­firmed yes­ter­day that fol­low­ing a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion, the stu­dents were placed on ex­tend­ed sus­pen­sion and their sus­pen­sions had not been lift­ed.

“Fol­low­ing a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the phys­i­cal al­ter­ca­tion in­volv­ing four stu­dents of North­east­ern Col­lege on Sep­tem­ber 8, the stu­dents were placed on ex­tend­ed sus­pen­sion. Their sus­pen­sions have there­fore not been lift­ed,” Dowlath said.

He added, “The min­istry is al­so aware of ma­te­r­i­al cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia in which stu­dents ap­pear to be apol­o­gis­ing. The cre­ation and cir­cu­la­tion of this ma­te­r­i­al were not sanc­tioned by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

“Giv­en that the mat­ter in­volves mi­nors, the min­istry is re­view­ing the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing its pro­duc­tion and pub­li­ca­tion and re­minds all per­sons of the im­por­tance of pro­tect­ing the pri­va­cy, dig­ni­ty and wel­fare of stu­dents.”

Dowlath said the dis­ci­pli­nary mat­ter con­tin­ues to be ad­dressed in ac­cor­dance with the es­tab­lished pro­ce­dures.

When asked what the next step in the process is, he di­rect­ed Guardian Me­dia to the Na­tion­al Schools Code of Con­duct.

The min­istry’s Na­tion­al Schools Code of Con­duct out­lines a range of pos­si­ble con­se­quences for stu­dent mis­con­duct. These in­clude stu­dent and par­ent con­fer­ences, in­ter­ven­tion by Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices, de­ten­tion, in-school sus­pen­sion, sus­pen­sion of up to sev­en days and ex­tend­ed sus­pen­sion. Oth­er mea­sures in­clude me­di­a­tion, com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice, resti­tu­tion, with­hold­ing of priv­i­leges, be­hav­iour­al con­tracts and re­fer­ral to law en­force­ment agen­cies where con­duct may con­sti­tute a crim­i­nal of­fence.

The code al­so pro­vides for an ex­pul­sion warn­ing let­ter and, in se­vere or re­peat­ed cas­es, ex­pul­sion, sub­ject to due process and con­sid­er­a­tion of the child’s best in­ter­ests.

The min­istry did not in­di­cate what fur­ther dis­ci­pli­nary mea­sures, if any, would be im­posed on the four stu­dents.

TTUTA pres­i­dent Crys­tal Ashe said the union had no is­sue with the stu­dents be­ing placed on ex­tend­ed sus­pen­sion if the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties de­ter­mined that it was nec­es­sary.

“TTUTA has no qualms with that. We are in sup­port of that be­cause if it is that you can­not be­have in the space that you are pro­vid­ed with to get your ed­u­ca­tion, and we know that the sus­pen­sion of the stu­dents lies first of all with the prin­ci­pal, who has the au­thor­i­ty to sus­pend them just for sev­en days,” Ashe said.

Ashe said the dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion could al­so serve as a de­ter­rent to oth­er stu­dents who wit­nessed the in­ci­dent.

“Oth­er stu­dents will see and sort of be dis­suad­ed, will not make the same mis­takes and will not go down the same path,” he said.

How­ev­er, he not­ed that sus­pen­sion alone would not nec­es­sar­i­ly ad­dress the un­der­ly­ing is­sues af­fect­ing stu­dents, par­tic­u­lar­ly those who may al­ready be dis­en­gaged from school.