DIRECTOR for Safety and Security in Schools Sergeant Coleridge Minto is calling for more of the island’s religious leaders to partner with the education ministry in providing spiritual support to schools.

He said that the police Chaplain Services Branch is already a “big partner” and some 450 volunteer police chaplains or pastors will be making their services available to schools this academic year to help the institutions deal with incidents of trauma.

He noted, however, that “not only do we want our pastors to assist us in trauma incidents, but we are asking them to provide that moral and spiritual support to our schools, and we are making this appeal to other ministers of religion to join”.

“Jamaica has more churches per square mile than any other country in the region and so, if we have our religious leaders on board, then they can certainly help to strengthen our resolve in dealing with safe schools,” he contended.

Sergeant Minto was addressing the Courts Customer Scholarship Awards Ceremony held recently, at the Knutsford Court Hotel in New Kingston, where he highlighted measures being undertaken to address behavioural problems among students and keeping schools safe.

Safety and security guidelines, he said, have been revised and will be ready for the new school year.

According to Minto, they will address areas such as bullying, including cyber bullying, human trafficking “and a number of other areas based on the trends and the things that we are seeing in our schools”.

Sergeant Minto said the education ministry was also promoting student involvement in uniformed groups.

Fifteen schools will be benefiting from a new Caribbean Maritime Cadet Corps programme, which will be launched in September.

Sergeant Minto said that several other uniformed groups, including the Jamaica Combined Cadet Force, will be expanding their service to schools in the new academic year.

In addition, he noted that the mentorship programme, undertaken in collaboration with the Jamaica Constabulary Force, will be extended to an additional 40 institutions.

Sergeant Minto is also imploring schools to take advantage of the various behaviour modification programmes in place.

“We have a plethora of them, but chief among them is the school-wide Positive Behavioural Intervention and Support System,” he said. It is aimed, he noted, at resocialising students who display anti-social tendencies.

“We are hoping that other schools will seek to find out what it is and we will, through the regions, implement it in a number of schools where we have issues with deviant behaviour and challenging students,” he pointed out.

Other initiatives include the ‘Dream-A-World Project’ and ‘Change from Within’.