REPRESENTATIVES of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) say schools that are hot spots for violence among students are in urgent need of intervention, and are concerned that what was already a problematic situation before the novel coronavirus pandemic could become explosive.

According to UNICEF, prior to the pandemic, violence was widespread in certain schools across the island, with one out of every three students involved in a physical fight, and one in four being bullied.Jean Gough, UNICEF’s regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean, and Mariko Kagoshima, representative for the UNICEF Jamaica office, say children are buckling under the psychological burdens inflicted by the pandemic over the past two years.During an interview with Jamaica Observer reporters last Friday, Gough said interventions such as parenting programmes will have to be much more systematic, and that there should be an emphasis on after-school programmes for students who need more support. “I think after-school programmes are not happening; they were before COVID but they haven’t restarted these after-school programmes, and the ones that have started they are still not at the speed that you would need,” she said.The country has seen a number of violent incidents among students in schools since the start of the year, such as a stabbing involving two eighth-grade boys at Magotty High School in St Elizabeth in February.Also in February, two female students at Muschette High school in Trelawny were suspended after an altercation in which one of the girls was stabbed. And just last month, there was a stabbing at Petersfield High in Westmoreland, resulting from an argument between two girls. In another violent encounter, a 16-year-old student died from wounds inflicted by fellow schoolmate over a ‘guard ring’ at William Knibb Memorial High School in Trelawny.Gough also pointed to the stabbing death of a 15-year-old Papine High student in St Andrew by a 16-year-old, reportedly over a cellphone. “These things shouldn’t happen. This should be a societal wake-up call. No child should lose his life going to school,” she remarked.Pointing to the frequency of altercations before COVID-19 compared with the current trends, Kagoshima said: “So we are talking about an already very charged, very violent context, and then over 18 months of school closure — with very little contact to a safety net, especially those children coming from the lower-income families — in a not-optimal situation for a very long time, exacerbated their mental health situation.” This is why, she said, UNICEF is trying to accelerate positive discipline approaches to accelerate mental health support so that students can reach out when they are feeling left out, or scared, or anxiety.

Gough, meanwhile, stressed that there must be urgent attention given to interventions in certain schools: “Those hot spots need critical attention; there are areas that need more support. Security is one element but they need more support from the soft side. We need to bring this better together — more work with families, more work with communities, and more work with schools — we need to close that circle better.”.

Among its initiatives, UNICEF is working with the Jamaica Teaching Council to administer a psychosocial ‘return to happiness’ programme which targets mental health, not only for students, but teachers. Gough said this programme is being successfully used across other Caribbean countries, such as the Dominican Republic. “They had a period when they reopened schools where an hour was used every morning for games, and playing games — and teachers were a part of this. They are also using it in Colombia to make kids feel happy going back to school, so they just don’t start by starting the lessons,” she explained.Last month UNICEF collaborated with the Ministry of Health and Wellness and the Caribbean Child Development Centre to launch ‘U-Matter’, a new chatline to provide mental health support for youth 16-24 years old.

UNICEF said that in 2021 the economic crisis from COVID-19 impacted 80 per cent of Jamaican households, affecting child poverty which, in 2018, saw one out of six children in the country living in poverty. The fund’s 2021 report pointed out that Jamaicans are exposed to violence from a very early age, and about 22 per cent of victims of major crimes are children and youth.