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Anti-bullying policy will be operational in all schools during third term |25 September 2017

Primary and secondary schools as well as professional centres in Seychelles are expected to pilot a new anti-bullying policy in their institution in the following weeks.

Work on this policy, which is being developed by the Ministry of Education, began in May 2017 following recommendations made by the National Assembly as it was noted that school based guidelines were being used to deal with bullying cases while a ministerial policy was non-existent.

During a validation workshop held on Friday with head teachers, directors, board and council chairpersons and key partners of the ministry, the principal secretary for education Dr Odile Decomarmond said the schools are preparing themselves to put the operational procedures and guidelines into force in their respective institutions.

She said it is important to start piloting the policy now before it is fully implemented in January 2018 to help review and update the whole school behaviour policy which has been here since 2010 and to see whether the anti bullying policy is adaptive and contextualised.

“Since we did not want to reassess the whole school behaviour policy in isolation we decided to trial out the anti-bullying policy during the third term for us to see if it has an impact on the behaviour policy in terms of the sanctions taken up with the students who commit bullying acts and offences,” she said.

PS Decomarmond said a team which has been formed at the ministry will be sensitising the teachers on the policy and how to implement it in the classrooms.

Informative sessions will be held with parents as well to help them deal with their child which is being bullied and those who are bullies.

Among the various concerns raised during the session the teachers asked where does their role stop in cases where bullying takes place outside the school or on the school bus.

They also made remarks on how this will cause an increase in the amount of paperwork which they already have a load of.

Some felt that the ministry is throwing the policy at the school without evaluating the effectiveness beforehand.

 

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