Reid: We won't tolerate indiscipline in our schools

WESTERN BUREAU:

Minister of Education Ruel Reid is adamant that while no child should be barred from school, he is not about to tolerate any form of undisciplined behaviour from students in schools.

"We are not going to tolerate their indiscipline or misbehaviour. It needs to be managed," Reid said at a meeting with teachers at the Little London High School in Westmoreland on Tuesday.

"Even if we have to manage them out, we need to manage them to a place where they can be transformed."

Reid and officials from the education ministry toured Little London, Grange Hill, and Petersfield High schools in the parish on Tuesday, following a Sunday Gleaner story on December 30, last year, which reported that a 13-year-old Little London High School student was suspended for more than three weeks after it was alleged that he used expletives in the presence of a teacher.

REHABILITATION AN OPTION

"Let me make it clear. I do not accept any student in our schools that we cannot control. I do not support indiscipline, and we are going to work together to manage that," Reid assured teachers.

He said where the ministry needs to intervene, it will have to allow indiscipline or misbehaving students to go elsewhere to be rehabilitated.

"It's not that we are giving up on them, but school must go on," he noted.

Reid said further: "We can't have any set of students or any one student that is going to be disrespectful to our principal or teachers. If the child needs care and protection that the parents themselves are not able to provide, the State also has a mechanism to take those children from those situations. But, again, all of that requires us to go through the correct procedure.

"As I said before, whether it comes in the media or otherwise, when it gets to the minister, the minister has to take responsibility, but we have to, in partnership, work together to ensure that we are on top of all those things."