Pembroke Hall principal urges accountability for parents and school-area drug sellers amid student violence

A Corporate Area high school head says adults who supply children with illegal drugs and alcohol, together with parents who fail to supervise them, must face stronger consequences because substance misuse is feeding violent conduct among students.

Speaking at last Thursday’s education forum hosted by the Kiwanis Club of North St Andrew under the theme “Safer Schools Now: Strategies to Combat Violence in Schools”, Reverend Claude Ellis, principal of Pembroke Hall High School in St Andrew, argued that accountability has slipped even as diversion policies exist.

“We need to get back to our parents being held accountable… I know about the child diversion policy and so on, but our parents are not being held accountable enough because a lot of our parents are allowing social media to raise their children. From they are very young we give them a phone or a tablet to keep them quiet, and we don’t understand [the consequences],” Ellis said.

He also pressed for action against people who trade in intoxicants near campuses. “I want us to also recognise that the people who sell around the school, in front of the school and so on, they also must be held accountable, because they are selling the vape, and the alcohol, and the cigarettes, and all these things to our children and they are not being held accountable,” he told the gathering.

Ellis described arriving on the compound one morning and finding what he first assumed was litter left by football trainees the previous night. A beer bottle near the gate looked abandoned until he picked it up and felt that it was still cold. Grade seven girls were seated at a nearby table. When he asked about the bottle, one pupil answered, “A mine, Sir.” Pressed to explain, she said she had drunk it.

The student later indicated the practice was routine and that she had brought the beer from home to school. Ellis said that episode showed why adults who enable such behaviour must answer, not children alone. “So we have to get to a place where our parents and those adults who sell these things to these children are held accountable, because in her mind it’s alright because an adult gave her at that hour of the morning. Accountability cannot be left to the child while we support children’s rights,” he reasoned.

He urged stakeholders to “put a dent” in islandwide violence that appears in clusters, warning that incidents are under-reported and that moral standards have eroded. Schools have long faced indiscipline, he noted, but wider media coverage now makes the problem more visible. “Over the years we have abandoned the whole concept of just having good manners… There is a correlation between what we call deportment infractions to other forms of violence and maladaptive behaviour. But then there is this segment of society that says, ‘Hair nuh mek yuh learn and clothes nuh mek yuh learn, so give the children their individuality and let them come to school how they want to come to school,’ and the chickens are coming to roost now because the individualities are clashing,” he said.

Police in St Catherine South have previously highlighted a similar pattern. In 2022, during operations targeting drugs and contraband in schools in that division, officers said many vendors operating near campuses are parents who resume selling after arrests. Sergeant Princess Bayliss Ranger of the St Catherine South Community Safety and Security Branch said vendors play “cat and mouse” with law enforcement while peddling drug-laced snacks to pupils, framing the trade as a matter of “survival”. Despite multiple detentions, she said, sellers returned to offering ganja-infused cookies and alcohol-soaked gummies to students.

Broader national data also points to shifting youth drug use. A May 2022 rapid assessment by the National Council on Drug Abuse drew on focus groups with 160 students and interviews with 20 guidance counsellors across 13 parishes. Participants identified Molly, vaping, and edibles as among the substances young people viewed as most popular.