FORMER education minister and Opposition MP Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly says the call by Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar for teachers and principals to send misbehaving students straight home is simply placing a plaster on a sore.In a back-to-school message Sunday, Persad-Bissessar urged teachers and principals to adopt a zero-tolerance approach to disruptive students and parents for the new academic year which began yesterday.The Prime Minister called on the educators to not to allow badly behaved students to disrupt the education of others, saying: “I strongly urge you to adopt a zero-tolerance policy to disrespectful and misbehaved students and parents. Don’t stress out yourselves trying to help persons who don’t want to be helped; if students refuse to behave properly and parents are ignoring your concerns, send them straight home and let them and their parents battle it out in their house.”However, in a Facebook post yesterday titled “Think Deeper T&T: Dismantling Student Support Services and Simply Sending Misbehaving Students Home is Placing a Plaster on a Sore”, Gadsby-Dolly, the St Ann’s East MP, questioned if that approach was the Government’s plan.“If education is the key out of poverty; then each child should be given an equitable chance to gain their education,” she said.Stating that it was all well and good to say send students who misbehave home, she said for many students, home was a problem and their misbehaviour was the symptom of much bigger issues.“Hungry children misbehave; abused children misbehave, children with undiagnosed learning disabilities misbehave, angry children misbehave, children who lack attention misbehave. So how does sending them home address the root causes of their problems?“It is simplistic to simply say send them home... not that misbehaviour is to be excused, but if you experience what home is like for many of them, you would understand more deeply why they act as they do,” Gasdby-Dolly said.Sending misbehaving children home is like placing a plaster on a sore, she stated.Gadsby-Dolly asked what role did the Government play in addressing the root cause of student misbehaviour, saying the Government must have a role—and that is intervention.“This is where programmes like the Student Support Services Division comes in—to encourage better parenting, and to help students to better cope with their life challenges and still succeed academically. So when the UNC dismantles the SSSD—doesn’t renew the contracts of hundreds of school social workers, guidance councillors, restorative practitioners, learning support assistants, diagnostic specialists, special education instructors, school psychologists...what chance is the education system giving those who need help the most?” she said.“Sending misbehaving children home will not cure the problem of school discipline; nor will it help thousands of students and parents who need counselling, guidance and support to overcome their challenges and succeed educationally,” Gadsby-Dolly said. “What effect will sending misbehaving students home with no help have on crime and criminality? How do we help misbehaving students to transform their behaviour?”She called on the Government to restore the Student Support Services Division; boost the available support from the education sector to address the root causes of misbehaviour; restore and boost MILAT and youth camps “as they provide a residential alternative for those students who need to totally change their environment to become productive citizens.“This is not about politics—this is about the salvation of Trinidad and Tobago. We must think deeper,” she concluded.Trinidad and Tobago Unified Teachers’ Association president Crystal Ashe responded to the Prime Minister’s call during an interview on TV6’s Morning Edition yesterday.He said many of the children wanted to be sent home and did not want to be in school.“We have to be realistic about that,” he stated.He said there should be systems in place and some type of social programnme with rehabilitation.“When you send them home, they going and watch TV, they going on Facebook, they going on social media. How is that benefiting them? And when years pass and when they become adults in society, how are they going to provide or make any input in society? Will they be productive? No. You are breeding and cultivating bandits,” Ashe said.