Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice South/Cen­tral Wayne Mys­tar says an in­ves­ti­ga­tion has been launched in­to a fight be­tween a male stu­dent and a male teacher at the Moru­ga Sec­ondary School.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands this was the sec­ond vi­o­lent in­ci­dent in­volv­ing a teacher and stu­dent at the school in a week.

The fight was record­ed by stu­dents on their cell­phones and sev­er­al videos be­gan cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day.

In full view of oth­er stu­dents in what ap­peared to be the au­di­to­ri­um, the stu­dent and teacher en­gaged in an ex­change of phys­i­cal blows. Dur­ing the al­ter­ca­tion, both of them end­ed up on the floor. Stu­dents and adults made sev­er­al at­tempts to stop the fight.

In one of the videos, the stu­dent com­plained that the teacher cuffed him in his face and he was not “tak­ing that.” An­oth­er video shows the teacher bleed­ing from his nose with bruis­es on his cheek and lip.

Mys­tar told Guardian Me­dia that the po­lice were in pos­ses­sion of the videos and he had in­struct­ed his of­fi­cers to vis­it the school on Mon­day to in­ter­view the prin­ci­pal, those in­volved, oth­er stu­dents and wit­ness­es.

He said, “This type of be­hav­iour will not be tol­er­at­ed. We will be con­duct­ing a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to this mat­ter. “

Com­ment­ing on the in­ci­dent via What­sApp Mes­sen­ger, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Dol­ly Gads­by-Dol­ly said the min­istry re­ceived a pre­lim­i­nary re­port and had re­quest­ed a more de­tailed one.

Mean­while, Moru­ga/Table­land MP Michelle Ben­jamin de­scribed the fight as trou­bling and deeply alarm­ing. She said it points to a larg­er is­sue with­in the school, which has been grap­pling with a his­to­ry of vi­o­lence, ten­sion and aca­d­e­m­ic non-per­for­mance.

“Over the past few months, I have re­ceived trou­bling re­ports from con­cerned par­ents and stu­dents al­leg­ing in­ci­dents of vic­tim­i­sa­tion by cer­tain teach­ers at the school. While these claims are yet to be sub­stan­ti­at­ed, they paint a wor­ry­ing pic­ture of an en­vi­ron­ment that may no longer feel safe or con­ducive to learn­ing for many of our chil­dren.”

Urg­ing in­ter­ven­tion from the min­istry and oth­er au­thor­i­ties, she called for an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion, coun­selling and in­ter­ven­tion pro­gramme for stu­dents and teach­ers and the re­view and strength­en­ing of dis­ci­pli­nary and con­flict res­o­lu­tion.

Ben­jamin urged all par­ties in­volved to ex­er­cise pa­tience and un­der­stand­ing while the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is on­go­ing.

Mean­while, the grand­moth­er of a 15-year-old stu­dent com­plained to Guardian Me­dia that last week he was as­sault­ed by a male teacher. The teenag­er suf­fered a swollen fore­head. How­ev­er, she said her grand­son did not re­tal­i­ate.

The 62-year-old grand­moth­er said she made a re­port at the school and the po­lice sta­tion.

“Peo­ple are mak­ing all kind of com­ments in this mat­ter (the videos show­ing the teacher and stu­dent fight­ing) but they don’t know what re­al­ly cause this. There are some nice teach­ers at the school, but just like the po­lice, there are good of­fi­cers and bad of­fi­cers, there are good teach­ers and bad teach­ers. They not sup­posed to put their hand on no­body chil­dren,” she com­plained.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin but got no re­sponse up to press time.

Moru­ga po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing.