Educators last night called for Government to provide a purpose-built alternative school to cater for the most extreme badly behaved children on the Island.

The Bermuda Union of Teachers (BUT) said the number of out-of-control students by far surpassed the six places at the current Educational Centre, which is presently being run in a Salvation Army church hall.

Union general secretary Michael Charles said the facility was not suitable for its purpose and said the school needed to be able to cater to more students and have a permanent location.

And teachers, CedarBridge Academy Parent Teacher Association (PTA), parents, and a headteacher backed the call.

Mr. Charles said: “An alternative school is something that the union has talked about before, and was something that we mentioned to Minister Cox when we met after she took over the portfolio a few weeks ago.

“We feel there has to be an alternative to what we have right now. There are some kids that simply cannot function in a traditional school setting, for whatever reason, and we need to have a place for them.

“There are things that schools can do to help a child stay in mainstream education, but, if all else fails, they should be sent to a school where there are highly qualified and highly trained people to deal with them.

“If you get just two or three students who are very badly behaved and constantly disrupt classrooms, then it can lead to other students being disruptive. If you remove those two or three, it may solve all the problems. There are teachers specially trained in behaviour who could run the school. They can be brought here, I am sure.”

The call for the alternative school comes after the entire teaching staff at CedarBridge Academy refused to conduct lessons last Friday due to increasing unruly behaviour among students.

A teacher was spat at very recently by a pupil, and last month a male teacher was slapped in the face by a female student. Since the sit-in last Friday, the school board, administration, PTA and Ministry of Education and Development have been working together to find solutions to the problem.

A CedarBridge teacher said the media had understated the problem, but said the issue of unruly behaviour did not affect CedarBridge alone, it was Island-wide.

And they said action was taken at the school last week because teachers felt that a teacher would end up getting seriously hurt.

The teacher said: “We are talking about criminal behaviour. We are talking about psychotic behaviour. We are talking daily abuse. We did not take the day off. We simply wanted to take back the building.

“Psychotic children cannot be taught in the regular system.”

The teacher said one pregnant colleague at the school had recently been threatened by a pupil that he would “kick the baby out of her stomach”.

And the teacher said the common feeling around the school was that the “inmates had taken over the asylum.”

Last night, CedarBridge PTA public relations officer Robin Richardson said the main proposal put forward by both the PTA, board and administration was that a proper facility be provided on the Island as an alternative. He said: “We would like to see an alternative facility because there is a small amount of students that are being disruptive. It is only the small minority. They have special needs and we feel they should be removed from the main system.

“We don't want to throw them away - they should still receive a good education - but they should not be allowed to disrupt it for everyone else. They could get more hands-on teaching somewhere else. And the school also would like to be more autonomous. At the moment, if a child is suspended, they are left in school while an investigation and paper work is done. They then go on to disrupt the school some more. We would like the option to remove them from the school straight away.”

Mr. Richardson said since last Friday's sit-in, pupils had started to settle down more.

He added: “I think there has been an improvement this week. The message is getting through that these type of students will not be tolerated. We are working very hard with the administration and the Department of Education to improve things. “But parents must realise that they have a responsibility to ensure that their children go to school to learn, not to be disruptive. If a child is disruptive at CedarBridge, we will call parents at work or home and ask them to come to the school immediately.”

A headteacher, who did not wish to be named, said: “I would support this suggestion for an alternative school 125 percent.

“If you look at any other jurisdiction, they have a facility, or have access to a facility in another jurisdiction, to cater for children with behavioural problems.

“Our system needs it, and the educational centre is not a proper site, and doesn't have staff with sufficient training in this field. Bermuda is crying out for an alternative school.

“And it is not only the senior schools who need it. The middle schools and primary schools have problems too.”

Education Minister Paula Cox could not be contacted last night.