Durban - A school in Umlazi has dismissed claims by a parent of an expelled pupil that it was biased in taking decisions against bullying incidents at the school.
This was after the parent apparently leaked other bullying videos and claimed that the school never expelled the pupils involved.
A high ranking official at the school told the Daily News on Sunday that the school was aware that it was the parents of expelled pupils who were posting videos, saying those were old videos which the school had acted upon and expelled pupils involved.
He said the school has expelled five pupils this year alone for bullying others to show that it did not tolerate bad behaviour.
"We want to assure parents that we apply fairness in dealing with bullying issues in our school, so it was not true that we did not act against other pupils who we found were bullying others. I want the parents to know that this year alone we have expelled five pupils for bullying, and this record shows that we are the school that does not tolerate any bad behaviour," the official said.
He appealed to parents to support the school's decisions on bullying incidents because it wanted to protect vulnerable children from bullies, saying the school, which was founded on Christian values, would not tolerate bad behaviour by pupils.
The parent of the recently expelled pupil told the paper it was not true that the pupils on the video she shared had been expelled, challenging the school to provide proof.
She said she has been informed by other pupils that pupils seen bullying others in the video footage were still at school.
She insisted that the school was biased in dealing with the issue of her child and he was treated differently from others. The parent said she was not even informed about the disciplinary hearing and it was she who wrote to the school asking about the hearing and was told the decision to expel her child had already been taken.
In one of the videos shared with the paper by the parent who said the bully was still at school, the boy is seen pushing another down and kicking him several times in front of screaming pupils.
Last week, the paper published an article where the school said it had expelled the Grade 10 pupil after he was filmed slapping another Grade 10 pupil within the premises.
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