As school and Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials move to take stricter ap­proach­es to school vi­o­lence, at least three South East Port-of-Spain Sec­ondary School (SE­PoSS) stu­dents want those in au­thor­i­ty to stop play­ing “pol­i­tics” with the school’s fu­ture and think about the chil­dren.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia out­side the Nel­son Street, Port-of-Spain school yes­ter­day, the male stu­dents who all hail from the Laven­tille, sad­ly agreed that the school was like a prison to them.

One boy said, “It is built like a jail, with no green spaces or recre­ation­al fa­cil­i­ties to kick a ball, run or just re­lax.”