Former Truancy Officer at the Albena Lake-Hodge Comprehensive School, Michael Fleming, says that some people are blaming the school for the spate of violence occurring there ever so often but they are mistaken.

“It is not a school problem. It is a home problem and a society problem,” said Mr. Fleming, who still turns up at the school to give voluntary assistance. He went on: “Some of the children leave their homes for school under the influence of drugs and alcohol and get involved in violent acts threatening and fighting one another. This is all because of the problems they are having in the home and the community.

“They bring these problems to the school. The school is not a hospital. It is a normal school for normal children, but we have a handful of them with abnormal behaviour. In my opinion we need to take them out of that school and put them in some place where they can be helped, worked with and even educated. They come in with these problems and the school doesn’t cater for helping children with these problems. It doesn’t have what it takes to address their needs.”

He estimated that only a small number of children between 13 and 15 years were involved in the deviant behaviour. He noted that in the past a number of them had to be expelled thus losing the opportunity to be further educated at the school. He suggested that the badly behaved children who are still in school could be worked with and that towards this end there was a need to have probation officers in place, a matter he will be writing about next week.

Michael Fleming

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