Africa-Press – Seychelles. Minister for Education, Dr Justin Valentin, has urged parents whose children are being bullied at school to resort to the police if they have exhausted all existing avenues, with the help of the school, to address the matter, but to no avail.
Minister Valentin made the comment during yesterday’s National Assembly session when answering a question without notice brought by the elected member for the Roche Caïman district, Hon. Audrey Vidot, who said she has received numerous concerns from parents whose children were being constantly bullied at the Plaisance secondary school.
Hon. Vidot wanted to know the ministry’s strategy to address the problem and the available support for parents.
In his reply, Minister Valentin condemned bullying in the strongest term and said “no student should prevent another from studying”.
He stated that based on discussions with education officers, bullying has been a concern for a while, and although the school does its utmost to prevent it from happening, it still persists.
He said the latest approach, in line with the ministry’s strategic plan, was the introduction of ‘Ethos and Culture’ to improve discipline in schools.
In March, the ministry introduced ethics, morals and values education so that students could better understand their role and relationships towards each other. This is being done with the help of other institutions, namely the National Council for Children, social services department, family department and police department.
According to Minister Valentin, each school has its own strategy to handle bullying, however, sometimes the strategy is not effective because the lack of engagement from parents whose kids are bullying others.
“So today, I will be leading the Ministry of Education in this direction; after all attempts to solve the matter in a calm way, I would urge parents who want to take the matter to the police to do so because once and for all we need to deal with bullying because I want students at school to be at peace and in security,” stated the minister.
According to the principal secretary for education services, Merna Eulentin, who accompanied the minister, different steps have been taken to relaunch a campaign to reduce the incidences of bullying and anti-social behaviours in schools.
These include five priority areas; namely data collection to have a more realistic picture and data cases of bullying and secondly to review anti-bullying strategy and policy to see what has worked and how to improve on others.
PS Eulentin said three other priority areas focus on re-sensitisation and training of school communities, value-based education programme and lastly media campaign to raise awareness of the negative impact of bullying.
She also informed the National Assembly that the ministry has also initiated a healing programme with the help of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to study the causes of anti-social behaviours, to help children who may have personal issues that lead them to bully others.
For More News And Analysis About Seychelles Follow Africa-Press
