Data gaps cited as hindrance to social intervention efforts at curbing school violence

Amid the rise of youth-on-youth violence, and violence against youths across Jamaica, insufficient data, inadequate leadership and lack of unity have posed a challenge for stakeholders when attempting to curb the increasing incident rates in high-risk schools and communities.

In relation to youth intervention initiatives, Akeem Bender, project manager for the Social Intervention and Citizen’s Security Secretariat for the Ministry of National Security, said yesterday that, when an attempt is made to collect data from schools across the island, not all schools have the necessary information that is needed to drive an intervention.

“We would’ve gone into several schools which fall under the Inter-Ministerial School Strategy and we would’ve done school data audits and from those audits we realise that the data isn’t present,” Bender said.

He was addressing a roundtable discussion exploring the state of violence against children and youth in Jamaica, held at the Summit in New Kingston.

Not all solutions or strategies can work the same for every school or community and, as such, Bender said school by school data is imperative in shaping the ways in which the stakeholders in youth violence advocacy can address these issues.

DATA NECESSARY

“We don’t want to implement a programme in which we don’t have the data to suggest that this programme would work. We don’t want to implement in a school a parenting programme, however parental involvement is high there. We don’t want to implement a programme that speaks to literacy, however they’re doing excellent in English and in literature.”

Adequate data, Bender proclaimed, is absolutely necessary for informed decisions to be made.

Additionally, Bender stated that the leadership in schools must adjust to be more accommodating of youth advocacy entities and initiatives.

“When we enter into the school environment, if leadership is not on board, the programme is defeated,” he said. “If we don’t have involvement from each stakeholder, the programme is defeated.”

Meanwhile, Richard Troupe, director of safety and security in the Ministry of Education, Skills, Youth and Information, who was also a panellist, said his major concern lies in bullying and student safety.

Bullying was reported by the Ministry of National Security to be 1.2 per cent higher in primary schools than high schools. As astonishing as this information might be, other shocking statistics showed that bullying was especially prevalent in all-boys schools, with co-ed schools coming in second and all-girls institutions exhibiting the fewest.

Regardless, Troupe said he was just as concerned about the rate of school bullying in all-female schools with 27.8 per cent reporting instances. Despite having the least, he said the prevalence in all-girls schools remains just as alarming as the others as the percentage of cyberbullying is most concerning at these institutions.

“Forty-five per cent of the children that participate in the survey of over 9,000 would’ve said that the greater threat to their perception of safety and security is from the students themselves. Bullying and cyberbullying is a major issue in our nation’s schools, at every level of the system,” said Troupe.

Although bullying continues to be a major instigator of youth-on-youth violence, other findings revealed that 55 per cent of students actually feel safer at school than at home or in their communities.

In addition, students reported that they did not feel safe during their commute to school. Despite the majority of our nation’s children either walking or taking public transportation to school, Troupe said there was not sufficient conversation surrounding this problem, in light of a higher risk of sexual exploitation and harassment which affects boys and girls alike.

However, efforts were made to provide budget support to treat with behavioural and psychosocial issues in all high schools.

IMPROVING RELATIONSHIP

“The guidance counsellor, the dean of discipline, the school nurse and the HFLE (Health and Family Life Education) teachers are four important service providers for our nation’s children but have a tendency to work in silence. We are improving that working relationship in a deliberate and structural way. It is the four-member team developing a joint plan to respond to crisis situations targeting medium- and high-risk students.”

Meanwhile, the Safe School Policy, Troupe declared, has made progress after 30 years of being proposed.

“During COVID, when the system had been disrupted, it allowed our unit to give greater target attention to the development of this policy,” he said.

In the last year, Troupe noted that the education ministry has revisited the draft for the Safe Schools Programme following the unanimous decision that the policy did not give justice to the island’s vulnerability to climate change and disaster risk reduction issues.

“Policy development is critical but cannot be the only answer... . We have developed an implementation plan; we have developed a budget for the implementation of the Safe School Policy for the next five years.”

Therefore, in light of these issues, Troupe said the policy has been adjusted to accommodate issues other than violence or any other traditional threats that affect safety, especially physical safety.

The discussion was hosted by the Jamaica Youth Advocacy Network (JYAN), in collaboration with the High Commission of Canada in Jamaica and as part of JYAN’s #YouthAgainstViolence project, funded through the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives.

mickalia.kington@gleanerjm.com