SUSPENSIONS...NOT THE BEST ANSWER

Suspensions are currently the greatest level of punishments administered in secondary schools across Jamaica. The only punishment or action that supercedes this is that of expulsion. For a student to be considered for suspension, he or she must have committed some act that the school’s administration deems to be highly offensive, socially and/or morally degrading.  Currently, in most high schools across suspensions are given to students whereby the offenders either stay home for one to ten days or serve ‘in-house’ suspension whereby they come to school attired differently from other students. But is this really punishing the students for what they have done? Is this helping to mitigate the student’s problematic behaviour in anyway?

A fifteen year old student of a high school in Clarendon after getting involved in a serious fight with another student was eventually suspended from school for two days. “Oh well, two days off, t.v me a watch enuh,” the student said to a friend after receiving the suspension letter from the school.  Whereas, the student could have said this in an effort to convince peers that the suspension  had no effect, the possibility lies that the student could have went home for those days and watched television, go to the beach, play video games, hang out at the plazas or even go and chill with the wrong crowd. This is because the school had no programme in place to monitor students when they were out of school on suspension. With the poor parenting standards that pervades Jamaica, the student may not even be monitored at home. The student also ends up missing many classes, and hence his/her education is seriously affected. So, how has this helped the student really? There is no guarantee that the student will not commit the same act again. >>>Read More