Holness warns of law to hold parents of misbehaving children accountable
The government may soon be introducing a law that will have parents of misbehaving children paying for their children’s bad behaviour.
Prime Minister, Andrew Holness made the announcement at a gathering of JLP supporters at an Area Council Four meeting held at Rusea’s High School in Hanover on Sunday.
“We will be reviewing the methodologies and practices within the school system that are used to manage behaviour and, where necessary, we may very well have to introduce new legislation to hold parents to account,” he warned.
Holness is also the the Minister of Education. He pointed to the trend of increasing violence in schools over the years. And noted that it is not fair for teachers to be burdened with this added responsibility.
“The problem that we are having is that if we are not controlling the children from the home, it is quite unfair to expect the teacher who has to deliver her lesson as the instructional leader of the classroom to divert from her training to go and deal with disruptive kids in the classroom,” argued Holness.
While noting that mischievous behaviour is normal among children, he said there are those that goes against the norm. And in this case, parents are also to be held accountable.
“There are some children whose behaviour disrupts the entire school; whose behaviour disrupts your child from learning and it is unfair that the entire school has to shut down because one child coming from one bad home without a parent talking to them and guiding them,” he said.
