WESTERN BUREAU — Education Minister Burchell Whiteman has indicated that the idea of an academic boot camp could be among the range of initiatives his ministry intends to introduce to curb violence in schools this academic year.

“We are also looking at a residential facility. We haven’t agreed yet that it makes sense. If that is agreed it will be part of the mix that we can use, largely for secondary schools,” the minister told the Kiwanis Club of Montego Bay Thursday.

The heads of the island’s newly-assigned high schools introduced the idea of academic boot camps for delinquent students in the wake of the upsurge in school violence earlier this year.

“The concept is strict discipline, almost like a paramilitary kind discipline with academic and cultural programmes (with) the necessary support agencies like counsellors, psychiatrists,” Hopeton Henry, first vice-president of the Association of Principals and Vice Principals of the upgraded high schools told the Observer then.

“We think this would be a temporary facility for like three to six months, depending on the time it would take for a person to be rehabilitated,” he added.

At that time, the association indicated their desire to discuss the proposal with Whiteman and National Security Minister Peter Phillips. But up to now, it was not clear whether there was even the possibility of the idea reaching fruition.

The incidents of violence in schools last school year included a murder at the St James High School in Montego Bay. Now, a 17-year-old boy is on a murder charge following the June 13 murder of his 17 year-old classmate at the school. Since then, the issue has been at the centre of much debate as people across the society try to find the best measures to counter such incidents.

The public defender, Howard Hamilton, is one such person. In the wake of a flare-up of gang-related violence at the Frome Technical High School in Westmoreland a few months ago, he offered the boys involved and their parents the opportunity to get counselling.

Now, Minister Whiteman says a two-day retreat in October will pave the way for the other initiatives that will be undertaken.

The retreat, he said, will take place at a location outside the urban area and will target principals of the roughly 24 schools thought to be most at risk for violence.

“In October we’ll be having a little retreat for a principal and two members of staff from (more than) 20 schools, which either are at risk or perceived to be at risk in terms of internal violence. (We will) look at measures which can be taken to minimise or prevent them,” he said.

He added that he was optimistic that the brainstorming would prove fruitful.

“There is no single menu for dealing with it (school violence). The value of this two-day retreat is for them to hear the experiences of other schools where they have had the same kind of problem and where they have worked through it according to their own situation. So they will get a kind of guidance,” he said.

“A number of schools have working programmes where they have really cut the violence down to manageable proportions or eliminated it altogether and so we are going to be learning from those experiences. We are going to be bringing in people, psychologists and people of that kind to look at how we can do it.”

Meanwhile, he said the ministry would also look at the possibility of taking troubled students out of school for treatment on a part-time basis.

“We are still exploring the option of pulling them out on a part-time basis for treatment and some kind of restoration of good behaviour.”

That programme, the minister said, would be complemented by the Peace and Love in Schools (PALS) programme, which seeks to identify potential dysfunctional behaviour at an early stage to prevent its escalation.

And even as he alluded to the new initiatives, Whiteman said it was critical that the teaching of values be continued.

“At the primary level, we have to keep on teaching the values curriculum which exists in the schools. We have to keep on re-enforcing the whole identity question in them and get the teachers to see if they can identify where they have problems outside the school which may be impacting on that child inside and therefore causing him to become violent,” he said.

Added the minister: “And perhaps, the best cure of all, teach well and the children will be focused on learning and be less inclined to do disruptive things.”