SowetanLive reports that according to lawyers representing the SA Council for Educators (Sace), there was nothing legally wrong with fining a teacher who assaulted a pupil R10,000 and allowing the teacher to keep his or her job.
This argument was put to the Pretoria High Court in defence of Sace’s lenient sanctioning of two teachers, one who beat up a pupil so much he needed head surgery. In 2015, a teacher in Gauteng used a hard pipe to strike a 10-year-old boy on the head and the child went for surgery due to injuries he suffered. After undergoing surgery, the boy’s mother was forced to move her son to a special school as his cognitive abilities had suffered. In the second case in Limpopo in 2019, a teacher used her hand to strike a pupil, aged 7, across her left cheek. She then used her hand again to hit the child on top of her head. The child's left ear bled. Sace subjected both teachers to disciplinary processes, after which they received fines of R10,000 and their names were removed from the teachers’ roll. But this was suspended for 10 years and they are still working at the same schools. On Tuesday, Section 27, representing the Centre for Child Law and the parents of the pupils, approached the court challenging this decision, which they said was too lenient. They also claimed that the current prescribed guidelines that Sace used to sanction teachers who have assaulted pupils did not put the interest of the child at heart. These guidelines as provided for in the Sace Act were issued in 2016 and revised in 2020. Corporal punishment was outlawed in SA in 1996, but despite the law, incidents of educators assaulting pupils have persisted over the years. Judgment was reserved.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Penwell Dlamini at SowetanLive
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