Reports of yet another violent school outbreak, the third in as many days – this time involving a parent – have emerged while the Ministry of Education agreed to introduce an action plan to combat school violence in a two-hour online stakeholder meeting on Thursday, officials have said.
In the latest incident, parents reported an alleged security breach on Thursday at Wesley Hall Junior School – run by a top Barbados Union of Teachers (BUT) official – involving claims of a knife-wielding woman entering the school premises.
Details on the plan were not immediately available as education officials remained tight-lipped and the BUT declined to reveal the plan’s contents.
President Rudy Lovell, who participated in the ministry meeting, told Barbados TODAY, “the meeting was cordial” but declined to divulge any of the agreed plans.
“A lot was discussed and some decisions were taken; there are short-term and long-term suggestions,” he said. “Those decisions would be communicated by the ministry to the media in due course and we will continue to work with the ministry to address the issue of violence in schools. We believe violence in schools is a public health issue and we need the support of every agency and every Barbadian to help remediate this problem.
“This is something that the BUT has been calling for for a while – the engagement with stakeholders on the topic, and we are happy that the process has started and we want to see it continued so measures could be put in place over a period of time and so that those in schools feel comfortable and the schools are safe,” he added.
Lovell assured that the union will continue to work with the ministry.
In a brief statement, the Ministry of Education said there was “an appreciation of the efforts of the ministry to date and there was further discussion on how we can chart the way forward as it relates to addressing violence in schools”.
“There were concrete items developed for each stakeholder to action. Another meeting will be convened in short order,” it added.
Earlier this week, two students were stabbed following a squabble outside Parkinson Memorial School, with one 15-year-old in serious condition; a day later, a Princess Margaret fifth former suffered severe head injuries while intervening in an apparent bullying case.
Pressing on the need for parental responsibility, Lovell declared: “Discipline begins at home and if students are not being disciplined at home, it is obvious that it would be difficult to discipline them when they come to school. We want to implore parents to find ways to discipline their children and to stop making the children believe that whatever they do is gospel. Parents need to take responsibility for their children and they need to realise that their children have to coexist with other people and the behaviours that they may accept at home, other people would not accept.”
At Wesley Hall Junior, school principal Herbert Gittens, who is also BUT General Secretary, said he was investigating reports that a woman with a knife had entered and threatened children, though initial accounts indicated to him that the threat was not serious.
But, outraged parents threatened to sue the ministry over lack of security and trauma to their children.
“My daughter came home she was telling me, ‘Mummy, Mummy, a woman come into the school with a big knife, and she was running all of the children’ A couple of my daughter’s school friends told me on the phone, ‘Aunty, she came to my class frightening us with the knife’,” one parent told Barbados TODAY.
“She went to the school the previous day and got warned by the police and she came back today again.”
Another parent seemed more concerned that, according to her, the school management did not inform them about the situation before their children did.
The parents have vowed to visit the King Street school on Friday to try to get to the bottom of the matter.
“Our children are so traumatised that they say they don’t want to go back to school. School should be a safe space for our children,” another parent suggested while expressing concern that a gate at the back of the school “leads to a drug hole”.
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