Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

The two Moru­ga Sec­ondary School stu­dents seen in a vi­ral video at­tack­ing an­oth­er stu­dent as she was be­ing shield­ed by a teacher have been sus­pend­ed.

This was con­firmed by the pres­i­dent of the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA), Mar­tin Lum Kin, yes­ter­day.

The video footage of the vi­o­lent at­tack that was post­ed to so­cial me­dia has gained over 42,000 views and shows a male teacher pro­tect­ing a fe­male stu­dent from two oth­er fe­male stu­dents who used a broom­stick, desks and even a dust­bin as weapons to try to get to the stu­dent.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, dur­ing the one-minute, 30-sec­ond-long video, the teacher seemed to have en­dured most of the at­tack.

TTUTA has since com­mend­ed the teacher for pro­tect­ing the stu­dent.

As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice for Cen­tral and South di­vi­sions Wayne Mys­tar con­firmed that the par­ties in­volved were ques­tioned by po­lice yes­ter­day. He said charges are to be laid soon.

Mys­tar told Guardian Me­dia that proac­tive mea­sures to pre­vent school vi­o­lence had been im­ple­ment­ed, such as com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing, threat as­sess­ment teams to col­lab­o­rate with school of­fi­cials to iden­ti­fy po­ten­tial threats, and pol­i­cy de­vel­op­ment aimed at pre­vent­ing vi­o­lence, in­clud­ing clear con­se­quences for vi­o­lent be­hav­iour.

How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted, “It’s a work in progress.”

Mean­while, pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Par­ent-Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) Wal­ter Stew­art said up­on notic­ing the uptick in school vi­o­lence, they had writ­ten to Chief Ed­u­ca­tion Of­fi­cer Dr Pe­ter Smith and re­quest­ed a meet­ing to ad­dress the is­sues plagu­ing the safe­ty, se­cu­ri­ty and tran­quil­li­ty at T&T’s schools.

“This speaks to the as­ser­tion that with the re­moval of cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment from schools, teach­ers are some­what ham­strung and oth­er mea­sures need to be im­ple­ment­ed to send a strong mes­sage to stu­dents that in­dis­ci­pline will not be tol­er­at­ed in our schools.”

Chair­man of the Con­cerned Par­ents Move­ment Clarence Men­doza sup­port­ed the NPTA’s call. He said they had al­so writ­ten to the min­istry and re­quest­ed a meet­ing to dis­cuss school vi­o­lence last year but have not heard from it since.

Men­doza said what hap­pened at Moru­ga Sec­ondary School was not an iso­lat­ed event and has been oc­cur­ring at oth­er schools.

In Jan­u­ary, po­lice had to in­ves­ti­gate a fight be­tween a male teacher and a school­boy who were seen trad­ing blows be­fore they both end­ed up on the floor. In Feb­ru­ary an­oth­er vi­o­lent in­ci­dent in­volv­ing a group of fe­male stu­dents sur­faced on so­cial me­dia. They were record­ed punch­ing, kick­ing, and throw­ing chairs at one an­oth­er dur­ing a heat­ed fight in a class­room.