Latest update April 18th, 2025 8:12 AM
School boy alleges attack by classmate’s parent
Violence in the school system was taken to another level yesterday when Kester Howes, a Grade Six Student, of a city primary school allegedly suffered a beating at the hand of a classmate’s parent. The incident reportedly stemmed from a cricket game in the school yard, which ended after the ball was sent flying over to an adjacent yard.
Howes, with blood streaming from a wound in his forehead, visited this newspaper just after noon yesterday in the company of his distraught mother, Venicia Hodge. The tearful Howes related a tale of how he was restrained, slapped and shoved into a wall before falling to the ground and hitting his stomach on a piece of wood.
The injured Kester Howes
According to the lad, he was among friends playing a game of cricket when the ball was hit over the school fence. He related that after the ball was retrieved a feud between the playing sides started.
Howes said that he and a few of his friends had decided to take the matter to a teacher but he noted that he was attacked as he headed up the school’s stairway. “A set of them just hold me down and juk me up in me belly and then I knock one because I see he knock me…”
It was a short while after, he recounted that the young man’s father arrived at the school accusing him of “beating up me son”. “He push me into the concrete wall and me head bust-up and I fall down and knock me belly on a wood.”
Unwilling to endure the beating any further, Howes made a dash for the school gate effectively evading the grasp of his adult attacker. He headed to the Bourda Market where one of his aunts operates a stall, informing her of the ordeal.
The boy’s mother, who was at work at the time of the incident, said she first learnt of her son’s dilemma when she received a call from the aunt who simply told her to “come quick…By the time I started heading to the stall they tell me let we go straight to Kaieteur News because we wanted to highlight this matter…”
The woman was advised to take her son to the hospital and file a report with the police.
The matter was reported at the Brickdam Station.
According to Hodge, she was accompanied by a police officer back to the school but all of the relevant information being sought into the matter was not readily forthcoming when requested by the officer.
Meanwhile, at the hospital, Kester Howes was examined and an x-ray revealed that there was no threat to the child’s life. However, health officials warned that he should be monitored closely. Up to last evening, he continued to complain of both head and stomach aches.
Calls to the school yesterday by this newspaper were met with a dismissive “the matter is being investigated by the head teacher.”
It was just last month that Minister of Education, Shaik Baksh disclosed that intensified efforts are apace to rid the school system of every indication of violence. He had announced a “no tolerance for violence” stance.
“We will not even have tolerance for a single case of violence in the school system,” the Minister had passionately asserted.
In fact, he noted that the Ministry is currently on a mission to stamp out all evidence of “Gaza and Gully” in the school system which seems to have noticeably invaded several classrooms across the country and has had a negative impact on some students.
Of recent, the Minister said that the unthinkable has occurred in the local school system where there appears to be evidence of the formation of gangs and cliques creating unnecessary havoc in some schools. And according to the Minister he will no longer allow this practice to persist.
Stern measures, he said, will be put in place to address this problem in the school even as he expressed optimism that parents will support measures already outlined to be implemented by the Ministry.
Currently, the Ministry is touting a 10-point plan of action to address the situation, which according to the Minister, should within the next three years bring about a notable improvement in the education system.
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