THE Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA) yesterday called for urgent establishment of special facilities to accommodate violent and disruptive students as the board of Frome Technical High School in Westmoreland voted to expel 10 boys for involvement in gang violence at the school a fortnight ago.

The call by the teachers’ union comes in the wake of a rash of violent incidents in schools that have left both students and teachers injured and, at first blush, seems to be close to the boot camp facilities proposed by the principals of the island’s recently designated high schools.

“Teachers in many schools feel threatened and find it virtually impossible to uphold discipline for fear of reprisals,” said the JTA, which represents about 20,000 teachers.

According to the association, there have been at least 40 cases of violence in Jamaican schools so far this year that have left people injured.

One of those incidents was the two days of violence between rival gangs at Frome Technical in early May in which three students were injured and eight arrested and charged with unlawful wounding, possession of offensive weapons and disorderly conduct. The whereabouts of two other boys could not be ascertained but there have been rumours in Westmoreland that one had gone to England.

The school initially suspended the 10 boys, but yesterday the board of governors voted for their expulsion.

On the eve of yesterday’s action by the Frome governors, Horace Estorine, a teacher at the Clan Carthy High School at Vineyard Town in Kingston was stabbed several times and had a piece of his lower lip bitten off by a student who took exception to Estorine’s disciplining of another student. Estorine was hospitalised.

In its statement last night, the JTA said it supported calls for the education ministry to speedily set up “special institutions to accommodate students who are a threat to teachers and other students who otherwise have a disruptive impact on the operation of schools”.

“These institutions should provide opportunities for these students to continue their education while at the same time attempting to correct anti-social behaviour,” the JTA said.

The education minister, Burchell Whiteman, was not immediately available for comment last night.

Days before the Frome incident, the Association of Principals and Vice-Principals (APVP), which groups the leadership of secondary schools recently upgraded to high schools, had voted unanimously to call on the education ministry to scrap its current initiative for dealing with violent and troubled students and implement a tougher programme, run along military lines.

“The concept is strict discipline, almost like a paramilitary kind of discipline, with academic and cultural programmes (and) the necessary support agencies, like counsellors and psychiatrists,” Hopeton Henry, the first vice-president of the APVP, told the Observer just over a week ago.

Henry is the principal of the Seaforth High School in St Thomas where three students are now before the court for attacking staff, including one incident in January when a boy allegedly fired a spear gun at a security guard. Two years ago, Henry had suspended 500 boys over the slashing of the car tyres of one of his deputies.

The education ministry, in response to concern by teachers for deteriorating school discipline, in January last year launched PASS — Programme for Alternative Student Support — a system under which a series of measures are applied to determine whether students need interventions beyond what a school is capable of.

Under the initiative, being piloted in some parishes, the students are referred for professional help and may be taken out of school for a period.

However, some principals had argued that the system did not go far enough and could not cope with some of the hardcore violence they faced on their campuses.

Prior to last night’s broadly distributed statement, which did not specifically mention the education ministry’s initiative, the JTA’s general-secretary, Dr Adolph Cameron, had stressed the need for special institutions, but in the context of the PASS programme.

Action was urgent, Cameron said, and could not await the assessment of the PASS pilot.

“We need a programme of implementation as quickly as possible because the system is in crisis,” he said.

G2K, a group of young intellectuals within the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), in a statement yesterday, saw school violence as a manifestation of the failure of the Government’s youth policy, which it claimed was ineffective and lacking in direction.

However, the youth arm of the ruling People’s National Party said it was a matter for joint action between the education ministry, parents and schools.