Education Ministry To Roll Out School Resocialisation Programmes

Programmes to facilitate the resocialisation of students as part of measures to prevent violence and other deviant behaviours in schools will be rolled out across the island shortly by the Education and Youth Ministry.

Speaking in a recent interview with JIS News, portfolio Minister, Hon Fayval Williams, said that the intervention is necessary because “[students] have been away from the face-to-face environment for so long”.

In-person instruction in schools was suspended for about two years due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

“We’ve just gone through the planning process and so we’ll be talking to our principals and administrators at schools, our regional directors, and so on, for us to begin rolling out these programmes. We don’t want to normalise violence in our schools at all. We want our parents, our students, and all Jamaicans to recognise that the school is holy ground,” Minister Williams said.

She noted that she has met with at least two principals to address the issue of violence, and is urging administrators be “more vigilant, especially during lunch breaks and when school [has ended]”.

“I want our children to wake up and feel excited about school, not to think some other child or student is going to be harming them. The school is a safe place, and we don’t want our children to go out and think that they must arm themselves to go to school. That is the last thing we would want in Jamaica,” she said.