School principal in hot water for beating up students

A school principal has landed himself in hot water for beating up students with a hose pipe as a disciplinary measure.

This came to light after one of the girls he allegedly assaulted suffered an injury and reported it to her parents.

Malibongwe Ntame, provincial secretary of the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union, said the union supports the department’s stance to do away with corporal punishment.

Meanwhile, SGB chair Reuben Sylvester said it had arranged to meet edu­ca­tion depart­ment rep­res­ent­at­ives at the school on Wed­nes­day, but the offi­cials did not turn up.

“We have decided on this move because our chil­dren’s lives are at stake. We can­not sit back. If we don’t take action like this, when will they listen?

“If we sit with arms fol­ded and wait, we won’t achieve any­thing and our school will col­lapse.”

The SGB wanted the depart­ment to com­mit to fix­ing the build­ing and employ­ing more teach­ers.

“We want them to send con­struc­tion teams to start work­ing. They have been prom­ising for years to fix the school.”

Prin­cipal Richard Joubert said: “This is not an ideal situ­ation for this time of year usu­ally pupils are get­ting ready for midyear exams.

“We were forced to at least keep grade 12 classes open because we are an under­per­form­ing school.”

He said the entire school com­munity was anxious about the situ­ation.

“We know that when time is lost we can­not get it back. Catchup plans need to be put in place, but unfor­tu­nately at this stage we are not sure how long the pupils will be away from school.”