Students’ findings on dirty bathrooms, litter, termite-damaged desks, and bullying should help shape safety decisions by schools and education authorities, the Human Rights Commissioner said on Friday.
The call emerged at a workshop for the Barbados National Student Council, where about 20 students from about 12 schools learnt how to turn data they had collected into findings they could take back to their schools.
“Principally, today’s workshop is focussing on changing data into decisions, how the data drives decisions,” Human Rights Commissioner Kerry-Ann Ifill told journalists.
“The young people had conducted some research, so we’re showing them what they can do with it, and how they can use it to make the change they want to see.”
The findings would go first to the student councils and the Ministry of Education Transformation, and then to the wider society, she said.
The workshop formed part of the commission’s policy development and public outreach, with education among its priorities, in the first in a series of collaborations.
“We’re trying to imbue them from now with the importance of the data,” she said. “Coming out of this workshop, we hope that they can transform what they took and make it into a report, into data that can help the schools to rearrange how they approach safety in schools.”
Barbados National Student Council President Shakir Daisley. (Photo by: Lourianne Graham)
National Student Council president Shakir Daisley said the data came from a school mapping exercise conducted a couple of months ago at an earlier event involving about 15 schools. Students were asked to map their schools and identify the areas they considered safe and those they did not.
Daisley said one of the main concerns was the condition of the bathrooms, which students described as dirty rather than unsafe, with “a lot of markers and graffiti on the walls”.
Students also reported a shortage of garbage cans, which led to more litter, and termites damaging classroom desks. In the canteens, he said, students complained that only a particular type of food was served.
He said bullying had increased in schools, affecting students’ conduct and perceptions of safety. But the mapping exercise analysis focused more on the surroundings and classrooms.
“The findings have not yet gone to the schools,” Daisley said, because the council is still going through them, and Friday’s workshop was part of that work.
“I just hope that we all can take the information and then take it back to our schools and then see what we can use to benefit ourselves.”
Director of the UWI School for Graduate Studies Professor Dwayne Devonish, who led the research session, said the habit should begin long before university.
He said: “I have this belief that research should not begin at a university. It should begin as young as the primary and secondary school student populations.
“Because when we can teach our young people to be scientific in their endeavours, to be research-oriented, we can actually develop adults who are critical, who are careful in their assessments, and who are able to create their own knowledge.”
The workshop was intended to inspire young people to create knowledge and use research to address challenges facing the Caribbean, from climate change to crime and violence, he added.
“If we can use research as a tool, we can make a difference. We don’t have to put it on the face of an older person. Research can actually be executed by very young people that we have here.”
The School for Graduate Studies is marking 30 years of coordinating graduate studies and research this year.
(LG)
