POLICE seized 15 guns and arrested 69 students for criminal offences at public schools throughout Jamaica during the 2007/08 academic year, according to statistics compiled by the Ministry of National Security.

Statistics for the present academic year were not immediately available, but stabbing and other violent incidents involving students continue to affect public schools. Among the most recent incidents was last month’s fatal stabbing of a 16-year-old Grade 11 Fercourt High School student by a boy who attends another school in St Ann.

In the 2007/08 academic year, police personnel who work as school resource officers (SROs), under the Government’s Safe Schools Programme, identified 17 gangs in the educational institutions while seizing 803 offensive weapons and 50 packets of ganja. There were also two cases of sexual assault in schools during the same period, in which the SROs intervened in a total of 1,114 incidents involving undisciplined students.

The statistics were made public yesterday by Children’s Advocate Mary Clarke, who expressed concern about the extent of the problem of violence in the nation’s educational institutions, but said children were mirroring the behaviour of the adults around them.

“Children live in communities where lawlessness abound,” said Clarke. “Children pattern adult behaviour, and so when we are dealing with violence in schools we also have to treat with domestic violence. The home is the first school for a child and so we have to treat with community violence.”

Clarke was speaking at the launch of an anti-violence project and a youth conference on conflict resolution sponsored by the Dispute Resolution Foundation in partnership with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Ministry of Education at the Stella Maris Church Hall in Kingston.

Clarke urged parents and teachers to listen to the children’s problems and to create spaces and opportunities for students to express themselves without condemnation and judgement.

“One little boy told me, ‘Miss, when teacher accuses me wrongfully I am so vex when I can’t talk. Ma’am, I just go out and fight the first person that I see’,” Clarke said.

She added: “Children need safe places for learning. They can’t learn where there are weapons and indecent language. That creates an atmosphere of fear and tension.”

The anti-violence project will be seeking to reduce the incidence of violence in 30 schools in Kingston, St Andrew, St Catherine and St James.

It involves educating adolescents, teachers and parents on methods of conflict resolution, mediation and anger management, using workshop sessions and continued service delivery through child-friendly peace and justice centres.

At yesterday’s launch, youth peace facilitator Orlando Hamilton supported a recent call by Education Minister Andrew Holness that parents should be held accountable when their children run afoul of the law.

He related a recent incident in which a 16-year-old boy was found on the street in possession of a gun by the police at 1:30 one morning. Hamilton said the boy’s mother protested against the arrest, saying that her son was a ‘good boy and him a go school a morning’.

“When you see nine o’clock come and you son nuh come in, go a road go look fi you son,” Hamilton urged parents.

Deputy representative for UNICEF Jamaica, Nada Marasovic, in endorsing the anti-violence project, said a baseline assessment between January 2006 and December 2008 revealed that 4,689 children were victims of major crimes. She said the children themselves were getting more involved in criminal activity.

“The aim of the project is to better understand the emotions of children, what triggers their emotions and how to respond appropriately,” she said.

Among those in attendance at yesterday’s project launch were teachers, guidance counsellors, students and parents from the targeted schools, as well as youth peace facilitators trained by the Dispute Resolution Foundation.