Bernard Isaacs Primary School in the light for the wrong reasons. A few parents voice their concerns about the bullying matter at the school.
Veronique Buys explained: “Apparently the bullying started a week or two ago. The boys are harassing her, this boy and his friends wait for her in her class, and at the gate after school. I don’t know what they want from her.
“She’s afraid to go to school now so I’m here to see the principal to find out what they going to do about it because she has reported it and nothing has been done. They tease her, put papers in her bag. The boys are in Grade 3 and my daughter is in Grade 2. As you can see she is very traumatised now.”
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Buys daughter was crying in the office because she did not want to be at school. They keep on bullying my child and I can’t fight with the teachers when it’s the children that are doing this.
The problem here is that some parents don’t discipline their children and then their children come to school and bully our children that are well mannered.
It’s the third time that I went to the school,” said another parent, Ursula Moholola. Her daughter is in Grade 4. According to Moholola, the bullies swear at her daughter and tell her to fetch her mother. The teacher told Moholola that she shouts at the boys but that doesn’t help because her daughter cries and doesn’t want to go to school.
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“This bullying has been going on long at the school. The groups of bullies have names, there’s this group who call themselves ‘the crew’. I have two grandsons who were also bullied. They take their stuff, swear at them and they tease our children.
“It’s a good school and I’m not going to get a transfer for my daughter just because of this bullying. This thing is a problem because I can’t go hit another person’s child and it’s going to be a problem because us as parents are going to fight each other also,” expressed Moholola.
A parent who did not want her name mentioned said that there’s gangsterism that is happening at the school. Children from Grade 3 are in these gangs.
“The problem with my son started last year, I went to the school and they sorted it out, so it stopped now this year it is starting again. My son is in Grade 5 and he has a problem with his skin so the boy teases him about it. He gets pushed around and his things get taken,” said the concerned parent.
The parent stated that her son was taught not to hit back, not because he can’t but because it’s wrong.
Speaking to the deputy principal of the school, Janice Lachporia, she said: “we try our best to stop the bullying, we have assemblies on bullying, we trying to have anti-bullying campaigns, we are really trying to the best of our ability. We constantly calling in parents and also we have to be careful because we have to listen to both sides of the story.”
According to Lachporia, the school gives out a yellow letter to make the parents aware of the issue, after three yellow letters, the child will get a pink letter and it is then when the parents are called in for a meeting.
“We also doing informal sessions with social workers as well but it’s a process that needs to be taken and parents need to sign consent forms, some parents don’t want to sign and we cannot force the issue then,” explained Lachporia.
Principal Jeff Davey said that they will be releasing an official statement on the matter.
