Welfare at risk | Calls for policy to safeguard teachers
May 15, 2025
A concerned teacher from Rakiraki has revealed that they are now spending more time monitoring student behaviour and less time teaching the students, with student behaviour nowadays becoming worse.
While raising the issue at the public consultation on the review of the Education Act 1966 in Rakiraki, the teacher says with zero tolerance on corporal punishment being followed nowadays, more weight has been added to their work in terms of monitoring the behaviour of students.
He questioned the Ministry and the members of the review team on when the Ministry incorporated zero tolerance on corporal punishment.
He says corporal punishment was used during their school days, but they succeeded in life and got a job.
The concerned teacher also says that nowadays, when they use it on students to discipline them, the parents report the teachers.
He adds that they continue to counsel students who break the rules, but students continue to show indiscipline behaviour, and he believes counselling is not working.
He asks where a teacher stands when they try to discipline a student.
Responding to the concern raised, the Education Ministry representative says the government signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1993, and within this framework, corporal punishment was highlighted as one of the issues. He says the Ministry did not introduce the policy, but the government did.
The representative says the issue of corporal punishment will need to be re-looked at by the government.
