Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath says while progress has been made in re­duc­ing dis­rup­tions out­side the class­room, trou­bling new da­ta shows be­hav­iour­al is­sues are in­creas­ing­ly oc­cur­ring dur­ing in­struc­tion­al time.

He has de­scribed the shift in schools across the coun­try as crit­i­cal, prompt­ing re­vi­sions to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s Na­tion­al School Code of Con­duct (NSCC).

“The most im­por­tant thing we are look­ing at is to guard in­struc­tion­al time, to use as many mea­sures as pos­si­ble to max­imise stu­dents’ time in the class­room. What we need is a dis­ci­plined class­room,” Dr Dowlath said yes­ter­day, dur­ing the launch of the up­dat­ed at the min­istry’s head of­fice in Port-of-Spain.