Cape Town - A Cape Town school is investigating an incident in which a teacher allegedly beat a Grade 9 pupil over the head with a stick.
A teacher at Eben Dönges High School in Kraaifontein is alleged to have beaten the pupil in the presence of a number of his classmates.
The parent of one of the children who was present said her daughter was “traumatised” after seeing her classmate being beaten.
The school’s principal, Wilfred Taylor, said he was aware of the incident and the school was investigating.
The parent, who asked not to be named, said her daughter – who is in Grade 9 – had come home crying on Wednesday after seeing her classmate being hit over the head and falling to the floor, bleeding.
The parent said she wanted to speak out because this could have happened to her child.
Her daughter, 16, said a number of the boys in her class had moved around some of the desks that were supposed to be stacked in the classroom.
When their teacher arrived, he was carrying a stick that was “very big – like a branch from a tree”.
“He was instructing the boy to put the desks where they belong,” the girl said. “But the boy panicked because he saw the stick coming closer to him.”
The girl told the Cape Times that after the incident, the boy’s classmates had tried to help him.
“It was so emotional because a lot of blood was coming out of his head,” she said, adding that the boy had returned to school on Thursday.
Taylor said he was aware of an incident between a teacher and a Grade 9 pupil on Wednesday, but said some of what he had been told differed from what the parent had said. He said he had tended to the boy after the incident and made sure he was “comfortable”.
“The school does not condone any unprofessional actions by educators,” Taylor said.
The Cape Times attempted to reach the Western Cape Education Department since Thursday, but the department had not yet replied by on Sunday.
Cape Times