Last week, as students across Jamaica sat down to begin their high-stakes Primary Exit Profile (PEP) Grade 6 examinations, the parents, teachers and school administrators gathered to support them carried far more than just the usual worry about academic performance. Hanging over the moment was a deep, shared anxiety about what comes after the test: the transition to high school, amid a spate of well-publicized violent incidents that have shaken public confidence in campus safety.
Recent high-profile attacks have put school violence at the top of Jamaica’s public conversation. In one case, a student at Seaforth High was fatally stabbed by a peer following an off-campus dispute that escalated; in another, a graphic video showing Jamaica College students assaulting a classmate went viral across social media. Jamaica’s Ministry of Education has publicly condemned both events, reaffirming its long-held zero-tolerance policy for campus violence and restating its commitment to building and maintaining safe learning environments. But this official reassurance has done little to ease the fears of caregivers gearing up to send their children to secondary school.
On the opening morning of last Thursday’s PEP assessments, multiple parents and school leaders at Portmore primary schools, located in St Catherine, shared their concerns with the Jamaica Observer. Ongoing reports of violence have left them uneasy, they said, and many are now actively restructuring how they select high schools for their children: academic excellence is no longer the sole priority, with campus safety now weighing equally heavily in their decisions.
For 11-year-old Liam Richards, one of the sixth-graders preparing to move to high school, the anxiety is personal. He has already begun mentally preparing to navigate a campus plagued by bullying and violence, and he issued a direct plea to older students: end the violence to build safer learning spaces for incoming students. Speaking about his own approach, the quiet, unassuming student said he expects to adjust his personality to avoid becoming a target, toughening up to deter bullies. While guidance counselling has helped him understand that many bullies act out due to unaddressed personal trauma, he stressed that hardship never justifies harm. Instead of engaging in physical retaliation, he encouraged targeted students to fight back by reporting incidents to administrators and excelling academically.
Reverend Dr Alvin Bailey, chairman of the board at Kensington Primary, argued that the scope of the crisis is being deliberately understated. He called on high school leaders to stop hiding incidents to protect institutional reputations, saying transparency is the only way to implement meaningful, targeted interventions to curb violence. Bailey also highlighted a underreported dimension of the crisis: violence directed at teaching staff, an issue he said demands urgent, targeted action.
Official data obtained by the Sunday Observer from Jamaica’s National Children’s Registry, a division of the Child Protection and Family Services Agency (CPFSA), paints a sobering picture of the scale of bullying in recent months. Between January 1 and March 26 of this year alone, 49 bullying incidents were officially recorded across the country: 22 in January, 11 in February, and 16 in March. Between January 2022 and January 2023, the Ministry of Education and Youth received 55 mandatory critical incident reports, the vast majority linked to campus violence. Of those 55 incidents, 35 occurred at high schools and 15 at primary schools, dispelling the myth that violence is exclusively a secondary school problem. The 2023 Jamaica Violence Against Children and Youth Survey (VACS) further underlined the scope of gang activity in schools: among school-attending children and youth aged 13 to 24, one in four females and one in three males reported knowing of active gang presence on their campus.
For Janice Richards, mother of a sixth-grade student with a seizure disorder that can be triggered by physical stress or attack, the crisis is a source of constant panic. She has already removed any high school with a documented history of violence from her shortlist of options, a choice she says is the only way to reduce her son’s risk of harm. “They always tell you that when you’re going into high school you are going to get roughed up, but I think nowadays these kids are taking it to a different level,” she told the Sunday Observer.
Mario-Lyn Anderson, a sixth-grade teacher at Greater Portmore Primary, confirmed that this shift in priority is widespread among parents at her school. “To some extent, parents are saying, ‘I don’t want my child to go to that school because of what I am seeing in the news or because of what I have known over the years,’ so with school selections parents were very careful in how they selected their schools,” she explained. Anderson also shares the widespread anxiety, noting that while some students are confident and able to defend themselves, many vulnerable, sheltered children face far greater risk as they transition. She also raised urgent questions about the lack of clear protocols for teachers facing violence from students, pointing out that educators are caught between conflicting expectations: if they walk away from an attack they are labeled weak, but if they defend themselves they face disciplinary action from school leaders or the ministry.
Many parents have turned to early character education as a first line of defense. Warren Walford, a member of Ascot Primary School’s Parent-Teacher Association and a parent of a PEP candidate, stressed that caregivers must instill strong values in children long before they reach high school, and build open lines of communication so children feel comfortable reporting problematic incidents. Parents Ricardo Duckett and Kemeshia Grant Swaby have already adopted this approach. Duckett, who leads a local youth group, hosts regular community events to encourage positive development, and teaches his son to refuse to bully others and to report bullying immediately to school leaders. For Grant Swaby, whose daughter attends Kensington Primary, her approach is rooted in faith; she says it is “heart-wrenching” to see the violence unfolding in Jamaican schools, but she relies on prayer to ease her anxiety as her daughter prepares to transition.
Kensington Primary Principal Christine Hamilton acknowledged that parents’ fears are well-founded, and noted that violence and bullying are not limited to high schools — they are increasingly present in primary education as well. Her school has prioritized early intervention, working closely with parents and teachers to identify behavioral challenges early, before students transition to secondary school. The school also hosts regular information sessions for parents to help them prepare their children for the social and safety challenges of high school.
Jamaican education officials have implemented a range of interventions to address the crisis. In October 2023, the Ministry of Education launched BullyProofJA, a national digital campaign designed to reduce bullying across schools and communities. The government’s Safety and Security Policy guides ongoing interventions, including counselling for at-risk students, development of campus emergency response plans, clear role assignment for students, parents and community stakeholders, and training in constructive conflict resolution. Under the national Safe Schools Programme, trained school resource officers are also assigned to campuses to address violence, truancy and antisocial behavior. Jamaica is also a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, whose Article 19 enshrines children’s right to protection from all forms of violence, and requires state parties to implement legislative and social measures to prevent abuse, support victims and build safe, inclusive learning environments.
Despite these official efforts, Bailey remains unconvinced that enough is being done at the high school level. “I’m not convinced that the high schools are doing all to contain and to eradicate violence out of the schools, because they are trying to protect their reputation and maybe their supporters, and because of that they hide the practices and the deviances that are taking place in the high schools, especially the negative practices,” he said. Bailey argued that the public only sees the “tip of the iceberg” of campus indiscipline, and that repeated incidents only prompt short-term, knee-jerk policy reactions rather than sustained, systemic change to address root causes. He stressed that lasting change will require full transparency and collective commitment from all education stakeholders to end the culture of hiding violent incidents.