The prin­ci­pal of a pri­ma­ry school in Rio Claro has been sus­pend­ed af­ter re­port­ed­ly strik­ing a stan­dard three pupil so hard his hand­print could be seen on the boy's face. The Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (TSC) sus­pend­ed the prin­ci­pal last Thurs­day pend­ing fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions. How­ev­er, the prin­ci­pal, who is near­ing re­tire­ment, could face fur­ther dis­ci­pli­nary charges from the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry, as well as crim­i­nal charges, as the mat­ter has been re­port­ed to the po­lice.

The in­ci­dent is said to have oc­curred dur­ing the last week of last term, be­fore the East­er va­ca­tion. Re­ports say a teacher sent the child to the prin­ci­pal's of­fice and dur­ing the time he was there he was slapped in the face.The child's moth­er was in the school at the time and when she saw the hand­print on her son's face, she im­me­di­ate­ly took him to the Rio Claro Health Cen­tre, then re­port­ed the in­ci­dent to the po­lice.

Pho­tos were tak­en of the in­jury and the med­ical and po­lice re­ports and state­ments were sent to the school su­per­vi­sor in the South East­ern ed­u­ca­tion dis­trict. They were sub­se­quent­ly passed on to the min­istry and TSC, which found there was suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to sus­pend the prin­ci­pal.An of­fi­cial from the min­istry yes­ter­day said the min­istry has a pol­i­cy of no cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment against stu­dents, and the prin­ci­pal, who has faced sim­i­lar chal­lenges in the past, had clear­ly flout­ed that rule.The of­fi­cial said af­ter the TSC rul­ing, the min­istry will now have to ap­point an in­ves­ti­gat­ing of­fi­cer of a su­pe­ri­or rank to gath­er ev­i­dence, in­clud­ing state­ments from the child, par­ent, prin­ci­pal and teach­ers at the school, to de­ter­mine if there is suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence for the TSC to lay dis­ci­pli­nary charges against the prin­ci­pal.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) gen­er­al sec­re­tary Pe­ter Wil­son said he was not aware of the in­ci­dent. He said that such in­ci­dents were very rare in the teach­ing ser­vice.Wil­son said the union al­so rep­re­sents prin­ci­pals, but he did not know if the prin­ci­pal in this case was a mem­ber. He said once a mem­ber re­quest­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tion, TTUTA will ac­cede.

Mean­while, the fa­ther of the child said yes­ter­day that he would pre­fer the process takes its course. Fail­ing this, he said, some oth­er ac­tion will be tak­en."And the process seems to be work­ing so far," he said.He said the po­lice had not yet con­tact­ed him or his wife to say if any crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings would be tak­en against the prin­ci­pal.Asked if his son was an er­rant child, the fa­ther re­spond­ed, "He is no an­gel."

He ex­plained that cir­cum­stances war­rant­ed his son's be­ing sent to the prin­ci­pal's of­fice on the day in ques­tion and al­so led to the par­ents be­ing called to the school.Point­ing out the case in which a ten-year-old boy from a Tabaquite school was charged with as­sault and re­mand­ed to the St Michael's School for Boys on Tues­day, the fa­ther said: "As a par­ent we have to do what we can to make the world a bet­ter place. We can­not bury our heads in the sand and pre­tend every­thing is okay, be­cause we would not be help­ing him or the world."