By Sue-Ann Wayow

CHILDREN who violently attack others in schools will be expelled and face the full brunt of the law, declares Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar.

“I think everybody is fed up with the daily dose of school violence,” she said at Thursday’s post-Cabinet media conference.

Persad-Bissessar said, “You send your children to school and you want them to be safe…We will treat every occurrence of assault or battery as an expellable offence in schools and an arrestable offence to put before the courts.”

She cautioned, “I want parents and students to listen very carefully. If your child assaults or batters another child in school, they will be expelled and face the full brunt of the law. They will be arrested.”

Persad-Bissessar repeated, “I am not saying they will be suspended. It will become an expellable offence.”

Also, schoolmates cheering in on violent acts will be suspended “because they are also participants.”

The prime minister gave a gruesome account of a female pupil who was beaten on Tuesday and the incident filmed by other pupils.

She said there were reports of a Form Five pupil at South East Port of Spain Secondary School currently warded at the hospital after being viciously attacked by schoolmates “in a planned and filmed assault.”

The incident took place  inside the school’s bathroom where three girls attacked another girl in what appears to be a “pre -meditated attack.”

The teenager suffered a fractured nose, broken tooth, blood clots in the eyes and other injuries to her body, Persad-Bissessar said.

In dealing with violent behaviour in schools, she said alternative spaces would be needed for counselling such children.

“But they cannot remain in our schools and be a danger to all the others, the majority of the students who are well behaved. We have to protect those well-behaved students from the few who will engage in assault and battery in our schools,” Persad-Bissessar said.

She said if some-one who was 15-years-old committed robbery or assault, that person would be arrested.

“However, if they do the same thing in a school uniform, they are getting a free pass. It does not make sense that the school uniform is a licence to break the law. This must stop. All acts of school violence must now be referred to the police for criminal prosecutions,” Persad-Bissessar said.

She added, “Parents need to take responsibility for their children’s behaviour and if they can’t train them to properly behave in school, then let them stay home and then we will have to look for spaces to properly nurture them and counsel them and to help them to live in a manageable way.”

Persad-Bissessar further said, “If any parent or student assault a principal or a teacher, that child will be expelled.”

She said expulsion rules will be enforced to the maximum.

The prime minister said, “We are fed up of seeing our principals and teachers abused and threatened by  both students and the parents of some students.”

Persad-Bissessar said the time has come for all acts of school violence be reported to the police.

She advised persons to  also make reports  to members of parliament if they see no action being taken by the police.

Defence Minister Wayne Sturge answered additional questions from the media on the issue of expulsion.

He said the Military Led Academic Training (MILAT) programme was an option and government will seek to make it mandatory.

“The danger is if you simply suspend them and they are not attending school, then they will be seeking community elsewhere,” Sturge said.

When asked if having actual criminal charges on a person’s record at a young age would do more harm than good, Sturge responded, “If you look at the video and if you have evidence and you are convicted in a court, then the court would determine what is fair. We are not determining what is fair. We are saying there are two sides of a story.”

He also said, “Whilst we appreciate that you should be punished or removed for the safety of other children so that you do not continue to bully others, we also have to take into account that if we simply remove you and you are not attending school  you may end up in a gang and we are seeking to try to mitigate against that, so that we will take that into account to try to protect you from yourself.”

He also said children were not remanded into custody but in the care of their parent or parents.

When asked if there was a possibility of the parent being charged instead, Sturge replied it will be possibility to be looked at.

He said discussion will be held with the necessary stakeholders including the Judiciary with the hope that all things will be in place for the opening of the new school year in September.