PM: Much ado about school violence

Urging people not to “overstate” the problem of violence in the school, Prime Minister Patrick Manning said yesterday that indiscipline in the school system was cyclical — occurring at different times of the year. In fact, the Prime Minister  warned that there would be an increase in indiscipline at Carnival time next year. “It was always anticipated that when the football season was over, you would see  an increase in indiscipline in the school system. It was always so and in fact you can expect to see it (indiscipline) become even sharper just before Carnival next year. That has been the history,” he said. Manning admitted that the School Intervention Programme run by the Ministry of Education had not had the success that was expected. He said the Education Ministry was now considering an additional proposal which is expected to be presented to the Cabinet very shortly. Government was looking at radically reducing the student/teacher ratio, he added.

He noted that many of the students, particularly those doing the technical subjects, saw no hope in the current school curriculum. He said a new curriculum, designed to give these students more hope, was being formulated. He  detailed the social programmes announced in the Budget aimed at training and re-orientating dropouts, saying that he believed that by the end of the year there would be a reduction in the number of dropouts as a result of these programmes. At the post-Cabinet press conference, Manning extended Divali greetings and had Minister in the Ministry of Finance, Christine Sahadeo formally extend such greetings on the Government’s behalf. On the issue of scratch bombs and fire crackers, Attorney General Glenda Morean said Government was looking at the legislation to deal with the indiscriminate use of fire crackers, especially in light of the coming Christmas holidays. She said she had the problem last year where her neighbour set off fire crackers and they were going off on her (Morean’s) roof.