Dear Editor,

The stabbing death of a male student at Penwood High School by another male student last week has once again highlighted how unsafe our schools have become in recent times and raises the question, what do we intend to do to ensure that our schools are safe once more?

Gone are the days when students had only their books and pen/pencils in their backpacks. Many are armed and dangerous and more incidents such as the one at Penwood will occur if we do not act now in a decisive manner.

Many of us take for granted that once we drop off our children to school they are going to be safe and will return to us at the end of the day. However, this is far from the truth. This was the sad reality of the family of 16-year-old Nario Coleman.

One cannot imagine what it is like to send your child to school only to receive a telephone call telling you that your child has been stabbed by another student. My condolence to the young man’s family.

Many of the perpetrators of student-on-student crimes are repeat offenders, some of whom have a history of bullying, vandalism, truancy, or some other maladaptive behaviour. Interestingly, many of the stakeholders within the Jamaican education system continue to turn a blind eye or, at minimum, pay scant attention to the destructive behaviours of these students.

We have had too many violent attacks in our schools which go unreported. Teachers have been physically attacked by students, students have verbally attacked teachers, repeatedly, and list goes on.

We continue to lose valuable teaching time daily because teachers are called upon to settle, manage and control disruptive students. For the most part, our teachers are not equipped to deal with these students with behavioural problems.

The Ministry of Education needs to act now and give clear instructions regarding the removal of these students from school as they are obviously not benefiting from the teaching and learning experience. In fact, by allowing such students to remain in school we are short-changing those who attend daily with the primary purpose of getting an education.

Wayne Campbell

waykam@yahoo.com