Minister of Education and Youth, Fayval Williams has outlined that the Education Ministry will now embark on a resocialization program that will be aimed at combatting the rise in violence in schools.

Minister Williams notes that this strategy is necessary as students have been away from the school environment for far too long as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic which landed on our shores on March 2020.

“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” Williams outlined

“We don’t want to normalize violence in our schools at all. We want our parents, our students, and all Jamaicans to recognize that the school is holy ground,” Minister Williams added.

Minister Williams also indicated that dialogue has been had with two principals thus far to address the issue of violence in schools since the resumption on March 7, 2022.

This includes the brutal stabbing William Knibb high school student and footballer. The student was brutally stabbed to death by another student over an alleged guard ring; along with a Papine High student and an Excelsior high school student who were both killed within a few hours.

Minister Williams is now urging administrators to be more vigilant, especially during lunch breaks and the dismissal of schools.

“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.