One of them is the recent undertaking by the Ministry of Education to set up a Task Force to report on incidences of violence at the Albena Lake Hodge-Comprehensive School and the establishment of an Implementation Team to ensure, through an action plan, that the recommendations are implemented within one year. The second initiative is the three-semester certificate course expected to commence next week, to train participants to conduct parenting support programmes - an undertaking by the Community College Development Unit in association with its local and regional affiliates and resource persons.

The importance of these two initiatives cannot be over-emphasised because both of them revolve around the youth, the human resource future of Anguilla. The acts of violence, that frequently occur at both campuses of the Comprehensive School, are always most disappointing for several reasons. Among them are the school’s important contribution to secondary education and the preparatory stage for tertiary education; the hard work of teachers and a number of brilliant students, and the fact that the institution bears the name of one of Anguilla’s much-respected educators and disciplinarians, the late Albena Lake-Hodge. Although the students causing the problem are in the minority, it is difficult for the majority of the student body and the staff to perform at their optimum level if there is not a safe learning and teaching environment at the school.

The Albena Lake-Hodge Comprehensive School is too important to be allowed to degenerate into a battle zone and one where the use of drugs and other forms of deviant behaviour compete with academic achievement and good moral and social behaviour. Since its establishment in 1984, the Comprehensive School, like its predecessor, the Valley Secondary School, established in 1953, has turned out many of our professional people in Anguilla, and in many parts of the world, and many more are appearing on the horizon. Gone are the days of the whipping cane or the detention punishments, tools of strict discipline in former years, when students were more manageable and their parents and guardians more reliant on corporal punishment to enforce good behaviour.

The eight-member Implementation Team, headed by Dr. Brett Hodge, has an unenviable task to devise an action plan to stamp out incidences of violence and other acts of unsocial behaviour at the school. It is envisaged that part of the plan will look at defining what contribution parents and guardians can make since the home is the breeding ground for much of the indiscipline and disorder among our young people. It is also likely that the team will look at the primary school situation where some elements of bad habits and unruly behaviour are initially emerging only to mushroom later on at the Comprehensive School.

The Community College Development Unit’s course in parenting support programmes, appears to be akin to the Ministry of Education’s efforts towards an action plan to deal with school violence. As indicated above, parents have a tremendous responsibility for the conduct of their children, but the situation is becoming so demanding, and complex, that there is a need for other steps to be taken, beyond those of the Departments of Youth, Probation and Juvenile Delinquency, to assist in the creation and implementation of disciplinary measures. Groups of trained personnel, either as parents or dedicated community workers, such as those to be trained in parenting support programmes, can do a whole lot of good in our small community. The undertakings by the Ministry of Education and the Community College Development Unit are certainly two initiatives which can help to preserve Anguilla and sustain its social development as far as discipline and other forms of good behaviour among our youth are concerned.

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