Editorial | Behaviour crisis in schools

On the eve of the new school year, in a speech at the annual conference of the Jamaica Teachers’ Association, the education minister, Fayval Williams, extolled her ministry’s initiatives to combat antisocial behaviour, especially violence, in Jamaican schools.

In fact, there was a specific policy around safety and security, the minister explained, with a multiplicity of strategies that are accessible to all institutions.

“I know that the support that we give includes coordination of searches upon request; regular school visits; motorised patrols in the general school environment, before and after school hours; regular patrols in the transport and town centres to prevent students loitering during school hours; and safety audits and reports, upon request,” Ms Williams said.

Additionally, the justice ministry has provided training in restorative justice in 500 schools, reaching over 12,000 students. Which is the equivalent, roughly, of six per cent of students enrolled in public high schools and five per cent of those at the primary level.

This newspaper applauds any and all efforts to deal with the long-standing problem of antisocial behaviour in schools, which, on the basis of the anecdotal information, appears to have exploded into a full-blown crisis in the post-COVID-19 period, since the return to classrooms after a two-year hiatus.

We, nonetheless, have two significant concerns: the apparent lack of empirical data on the current state and trajectory of the problem; and that the intervention, on its face, is primarily law-and-order focused, rather than grounded in deep social and psychological assault on the issues faced by children/students.

EXPOSURE TO VIOLENCE NOT NEW

The exposure of Jamaican students to, and involvement in, violence is not new. More than a decade ago, eight in 10 students reported having witnessed violence in their schools, and even more had done so in their communities. Three in 10 said they had themselves committed violence against other students.

Such exposure to violence in communities and in schools is likely to take a psychological toll on children. Although it made no direct association with the issue, a 2019 report by UNICEF, the United Nations children’s agency, found that 16 per cent of Jamaican adolescents (higher than the global average) suffered from some form of mental disorder.

The social and psychological disruptions – including the removal of support structures provided by schools – experts suggest, exacerbated behavioural problems among students, which became stark on their return to classrooms.

This is not unique to Jamaica. Indeed, one study by the National Centre for Education Statistics (NCES) in the United States, covering 2021-2022, said that 87 per cent of public schools reported that COVID-19 negatively impacted the social-emotional development of their students. Eighty-four per cent said students’ behavioural development had suffered.

Among the major concerns of school administrators were classroom disruptions from misconduct (56 per cent) and disrespect towards staff (48 per cent).

Analyses from other countries, including Britain, suggest that these problems would not just right themselves, or merely recede. They could possibly, in the short to medium term, harden among a cohort of children who were homeschooled during COVID-19 and are now entering, as Britain’s Guardian newspaper put it, their “traditionally most disruptive years”.

Said the newspaper in a recent report on the matter: “The most recent official figures, for 2022-2023 (in England), show that the fastest increases in exclusions and suspensions were among a ‘bubble’ of younger pupils in years seven and eight. Those pupils will now be in years nine and 10, when sanctions for misbehaviour are traditionally the highest.”

According to the Guardian, the most recent data on behaviour for state schools in England show that “the proportion of year seven pupils who received at least one suspension rose from 3.5 per cent in the year before the pandemic to 5.5 per cent in 2022-2023, while the rate of year eight pupils suspended rose from 5.5 per cent to more than eight per cent.”

However, older students, those in year nine and year 10, had “close to 10 per cent of pupils receiving at least one suspension in 2022-2023, also well above pre-pandemic levels”.

MOBILISE MAJOR NATIONAL ASSAULT

Similar statistics are not publicly available in Jamaica. But it would not be surprising if an analysis here did not, in terms of behaviour – if not responses – largely parallel developments in England.

In that regard, Minister Williams should urgently order an in-depth, data-driven review of the post-COVID-19 behavioural issues in schools to help inform a national response to what, by clear consensus, is a major problem affecting the island’s youth.

The Government, however, need not await this analysis to acknowledge the situation for the crisis that it is, and to mobilise a major national assault against it.

A brigade of psychologists, psychiatrists, guidance counsellors and related experts must be dispatched to schools. They must be supported by appropriate interventions, inclusive of feeding programmes, in the schools and communities.

Cost cannot be the deterrent.