(Jamaica Gleaner) Police seized 15 guns and arrested 69 students for criminal offences at public schools throughout Jamaica during the 2007/08 academic year, according to statistics compiled by the Ministry of National Security.

Statistics for the present academic year were not immediately available, but stabbing and other violent incidents involving students continue to affect public schools. Among the most recent incidents was last month’s fatal stabbing of a 16-year-old Grade 11 Fercourt High School student by a boy who attends another school in St Ann.

In the 2007/08 academic year, police personnel who work as school resource officers (SROs), under the Government’s Safe Schools Programme, identified 17 gangs in the educational institutions while seizing 803 offensive weapons and 50 packets of ganja. There were also two cases of sexual assault in schools during the same period, in which the SROs intervened in a total of 1,114 incidents involving undisciplined students.