Ministry Urges Shared Action to Tackle Bullying and Cyberbullying in Jamaican Schools

Richard Troupe, who leads the Safety and Security in Schools Unit at the Ministry of Education, Skills, Youth and Information, has stressed that curbing bullying and cyberbullying in classrooms will take input from every part of society.

Speaking at a recent Legal Aid Council online session titled “Know the Law, Save the Child: Under-16 Sexual Offences and Bullying,” Mr. Troupe said most bullying cases draw in three groups: the person who harms, the person harmed, and those who watch without acting.

He warned pupils who think standing aside is harmless that silence helps keep the problem alive. “We have been encouraging our students… [particularly] those who [see themselves as] bystanders and not directly involved, that when they see incidents of violence and bullying and cyberbullying, they need to report it to the school administration, somebody within the school, so that the matter can be treated,” he said.

Mr. Troupe also raised concern about conflicts that start on school grounds but spill into surrounding streets. He said children often notice that adults outside school are less likely to step in and calm things down. “That now has become a cause for concern, because children recognise that when they go off-site to resolve conflict situations, they are not necessarily seeing adults in that space intervening to try to de-escalate situations. Too often we see adults being involved… videotaping and sharing these situations, and we’re saying that cannot be the strategy,” he remarked.

“That’s why we’re making the call that if we’re serious about resolving the issue of bullying and cyberbullying, it is going to take the collective responsibility of all stakeholders,” Mr. Troupe added.

His comments come amid fresh evidence on how young people view safety. In 2023, the National Assessment of Perception of School Safety and Security was carried out with the Ministry of National Security and the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ). A total of 331 schools in all 14 parishes took part, gathering views from 11,981 stakeholders, including 9,750 children.

“Fifty-five per cent of our nation’s children, that is the 9,750 students that participated in the survey, felt that the safest place for them was still their schools, not their homes, not the communities they are from, but the school. That was a key finding from the survey, and it’s very instructive to the conversation around the issue of bullying,” Mr. Troupe said.

Yet nearly half reported a different experience. “The other thing that we found very interesting in the survey was 45 per cent of students felt that school remained a very unsafe space for them and, importantly, it is the students themselves who feel that students make them feel unsafe. It is suggesting that bullying and cyber bullying remain a major concern in our nation’s schools and among our students,” he added.

Mr. Troupe linked school-based aggression, including online harassment, to wider violence seen in homes and neighbourhoods. “That’s why I am saying that the conversation is important because the solution to resolve this issue is not only specific to the confines of our nation’s school,” he said. The survey also showed bullying reported in primary schools was 1.2 per cent higher than in high schools.

To push back against that trend, the Ministry has been urging schools to “flip the script” through its Safe Schools Certification Programme. The initiative, backed by the United Kingdom–Jamaica Violence Prevention Partnership, is meant to build inclusive settings where bullying is actively discouraged.

“We have started, for a second year now, a safe-school-certification awards programme, where we would have assessed schools in terms of safety and security programmes, creating safe and secure learning environment and ensuring that those schools are recognised. We give them a plaque and so, for last year, 71 schools were certified as safe, being level one, two or three,” Mr. Troupe said.

So far this year, 54 schools have earned certification — 29 at the primary level and 25 at the high-school level, spread across eight parishes. The Ministry aims within the next three to four years to have most of the country’s 1,010 public schools meet safe-and-secure standards.

“That is not suggesting that things will not happen in these spaces. But it is a recognition that bullying and cyberbullying will thrive in environments where children do not feel safe and secure. So that is a big investment from the Ministry of Education,” he stated.

Over the past four to five years, the Ministry has also worked with the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs to roll out restorative practices training in schools. “What we have been saying to schools and stakeholders in schools, including our students, is that it is not good enough to talk about a [grievance]… we have to find non-violent ways to resolve conflict. The restorative practices training is a two-day, school-based programme for at least 30 persons within each institution…, [equipping them] to work through conflicts and to find non-violent strategies [for resolution],” Mr. Troupe stated.