Against the backdrop of recent cases of violence in schools, Prime Minister Andrew Holness says a dual approach of school safety and conflict resolution is to be expanded to tackle the issue.

“… We have discussed with the Ministry of National Security and the Ministry of Education that all schools must review their entry policy. They must review their search policy and in particular, they must now seek to put in place measures to detect and seize weapons in schools, particularly knives and other implements that can be used to cause damage,” he said during a meeting with the Manchester Beliefs, Values and Attitudes Committee on Wednesday.

“We all know that the response to this cannot only be on the level of a security response. This is a social problem. The truth is, the children are coming out of households which are not always reinforcing the values of the society… Many of these children are without guidance and direction,” added Holness.

The Manchester Beliefs, Values and Attitudes (BVA) programme, led by Manchester Custos Garfield Green, is aimed at facilitating attitudinal change and social revitalisation.

Holness endorsed the programme, stating that the Government will support and expand it.

He said initiatives like the BVA are considered a part of the social intervention undertaken by the Government which includes increasing the central capabilities of the Ministry of Education with social workers to intervene in specific cases.

Holness said bullying “is becoming a major issue” in schools with gang culture also a cause for concern.

“There are some schools in which it is uncontrolled. The Government is also paying close attention to that and will have the necessary social interventions, both from the level of the security point of view, but more so from the engagement, particularly with our young males, who are caught up in gang culture,” said Holness.

“Even if they are not a part of the gang they try to model and adopt this gang culture and the only way to treat with that is the one-on-one direct intervention,” added Holness.

The Manchester BVA utilises justices of the peace to go into schools and interact with students.

The prime minister also announced increased resources for schools.

“We have already started to increase the number of case managers that would be available for community intervention and school interventions through the Ministry of National Security. We are going to increase the number of school resource officers
— and the school resource officer programme has been very effective
— but from time to time, depending on the intensity of the implementation, sometimes schools get resource officers and sometimes they don’t,” said Holness.

“What we are going to seek to do now after the conduct of this new assessment of the schools is to increase the numbers and then redirect some of these officers to those schools with the highest risks,” he added.