The teacher ac­cused of us­ing abu­sive lan­guage to­wards pupils of the Tran­quil­li­ty Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School was yes­ter­day pre­sent­ed with her sus­pen­sion let­ter.

And while she will of­fi­cial­ly re­main away from class­es for the next 21 days as the in­ves­ti­ga­tion is car­ried out - the teacher’s salary pack­age will re­main un­touched un­til a fi­nal de­ter­mi­na­tion is made in the mat­ter.

This was con­firmed by Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia, who said the teacher had been pre­sent­ed with the Cease to Re­port for Du­ty Let­ter.

Dur­ing a hasti­ly arranged me­dia brief­ing at the min­istry’s head of­fice yes­ter­day, Gar­cia re­vealed a se­nior School Su­per­vi­sor had been ap­point­ed to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter and was man­dat­ed to sub­mit a de­tailed re­port with­in 21 days of yes­ter­day’s date to the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (TSC).

The let­ter which was pre­pared by the TSC was dis­patched to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion yes­ter­day morn­ing for de­liv­ery to the teacher as the em­ploy­er.

The woman re­port­ed­ly signed and col­lect­ed it short­ly be­fore 2.30 pm yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing which she was seen ex­it­ing the build­ing laugh­ing and chat­ting with a fe­male friend.

Gar­cia said a to­tal of 14 al­le­ga­tions of mis­con­duct had been lev­eled against the teacher - drawn from signed state­ments re­ceived from stu­dents who were said to be among those ex­posed to the teacher’s ver­bal at­tacks.

He said, “Those al­le­ga­tions have been sub­mit­ted to the TSC and as a re­sult of this, the TSC wrote to the teacher in­form­ing her that in the pub­lic in­ter­est, she has been di­rect­ed by the TSC to cease to re­port for du­ty in ac­cor­dance with the pro­vi­sions of Reg­u­la­tion 88 of the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion Reg­u­la­tions as adopt­ed by the TSC.”

Even though the let­ter was on­ly pre­sent­ed to the teacher yes­ter­day, the woman was re­port­ed­ly re­moved from the class­room the day af­ter a se­ries of voice record­ings were post­ed to so­cial me­dia in which ver­bal threats, racist rants and dis­parag­ing com­ments were di­rect­ed to the pupils and their par­ents.

Gar­cia said, “The al­le­ga­tions were suf­fi­cient­ly se­ri­ous so that these ac­tions had to be tak­en to en­sure the rep­u­ta­tion of the school, the rep­u­ta­tion of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and the pub­lic’s in­ter­est is not left just to any­body’s imag­i­na­tion.”

He added, “It is the du­ty of the TSC to en­sure al­le­ga­tions like these are in­ves­ti­gat­ed.”

Pressed to say what fur­ther ac­tion can be tak­en against the teacher, Gar­cia said de­pend­ing on the find­ings of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, “Then the TSC can de­cide whether she can be sus­pend­ed for a pe­ri­od of time ei­ther with half pay or no pay; or whether she will be ab­solved of all the al­le­ga­tions that have been made and will be al­lowed to re­turn to du­ty; or if she can be dis­missed be­cause of gross mis­con­duct it is al­leged that she has com­mit­ted.”

Gar­cia added, “The sit­u­a­tion at that school de­mands al­most im­me­di­ate ac­tion be­cause we don’t want our chil­dren to be de­prived of an ed­u­ca­tion.”

The min­is­ter al­so con­firmed that the Stan­dard Five pupils who were re­ceiv­ing coun­sel­ing con­tin­ued to progress pos­i­tive­ly fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, a qual­i­fied teacher has al­so been re­as­signed to the class in the in­ter­im to en­sure there is no dis­rup­tion in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the syl­labus.