RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

In­ves­ti­ga­tions have be­gun in­to mul­ti­ple re­ports of bul­ly­ing at Fyz­abad Pres­by­ter­ian School. Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath said the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has ze­ro tol­er­ance for bul­ly­ing in schools.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tions fol­low com­plaints from par­ents who al­lege that pupils were phys­i­cal­ly as­sault­ed by class­mates and that the school’s ad­min­is­tra­tion did not ad­e­quate­ly ad­dress their con­cerns.

Two par­ents de­scribed in­ci­dents in which their chil­dren were al­leged­ly in­jured. One said she had with­drawn her nine-year-old son and is seek­ing a trans­fer to an­oth­er school.

The Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry Schools’ Board of Ed­u­ca­tion said it had not been in­formed of the re­port­ed in­ci­dents.

The board’s gen­er­al sec­re­tary, Gee­ta K Ma­haraj, said the act­ing prin­ci­pal and staff would be asked to pro­vide de­tailed re­spons­es to the al­le­ga­tions.

“The board will ini­ti­ate fur­ther sen­si­ti­sa­tion meet­ings with the act­ing prin­ci­pal and staff on how they should deal with is­sues of bul­ly­ing and in­dis­ci­pline in the school,” Ma­haraj said.

She ac­knowl­edged that the school’s re­sources and so­cial sup­port ser­vices were lim­it­ed, not­ing that the con­tracts of the guid­ance of­fi­cer and so­cial work­er had not been re­newed.

“The school does not have the nec­es­sary in­ter­ven­tions from the Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion at this time and the board will have to ver­i­fy the ex­tent of the in­dis­ci­pline re­port­ed,” she said.

Shan­na Din­di­al said her son was al­leged­ly as­sault­ed on Oc­to­ber 6, sus­tain­ing in­juries to his face and back. She said he re­ceived med­ical at­ten­tion and was giv­en three days off to re­cov­er from his in­juries.

Din­di­al said she was dis­sat­is­fied with how the school’s ad­min­is­tra­tion han­dled the mat­ter and lat­er re­port­ed it to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices.

Her son, who is in Stan­dard Four, has at­ten­tion deficit hy­per­ac­tiv­i­ty dis­or­der (AD­HD) and oth­er health con­cerns, she said. She was wor­ried about the in­ci­dent’s im­pact on his emo­tion­al well-be­ing.

Din­di­al said she had de­cid­ed to home­school him tem­porar­i­ly while seek­ing a trans­fer to an­oth­er school.

“The school ad­min­is­tra­tion needs to be held ac­count­able for not deal­ing with bul­ly­ing the way it is sup­posed to be dealt with,” she said.

An­oth­er par­ent, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, said her son was al­leged­ly struck in the face with a met­al wa­ter bot­tle by a class­mate on Sep­tem­ber 30.

She said she re­port­ed the in­ci­dent to the school and at­tend­ed meet­ings with the ad­min­is­tra­tion and the oth­er pupil’s par­ents but was dis­sat­is­fied with the even­tu­al de­ci­sion to move her son to an­oth­er class­room.The par­ent al­leged her son had ex­pe­ri­enced pre­vi­ous bul­ly­ing in­ci­dents and had be­come re­luc­tant to at­tend school.

Both par­ents are call­ing on the min­istry to in­ter­vene.