Durban - A TEACHER at a former Durban Model C school is in hot water, after video footage surfaced of a pupil talking about the extent of physical and verbal abuse experienced at the teacher’s hands.
The Education Department said yesterday it had sent officials to the school to investigate the allegations against the female teacher, after receiving a list of complaints against her.
Parents, who spoke to the Daily News, said they had established a WhatsApp group they were using as a platform to discuss the issue, after the school turned a blind eye to the “abusive” teacher.
The Daily News is also in possession of a number of letters of complaint against the teacher, but parents say the principal has failed to address the issue.
In the video, a pupil, who cannot be named, tells of how the teacher punches them very hard in the head and refuses to help them.
“She says ‘Come here!’ And then shouts in our faces.
"If we are doing our work and we ask for help, she will hit us hard here (pointing at the shoulder).
"She just hurts us,” the pupil says in the video.
Asked by the person taking the video whether the teacher does this to her only or anyone in class, the pupil says she does it to anyone.
“Almost all the kids in my class are complaining about her,” the girl says.
Another parent lodged a complaint, after her daughter came home with a bleeding forehead, after the teacher poked her with a nail.
“I went to the school to speak to the teacher and she told me that she was having a tough time, that her mother had passed away and that she was going through a divorce.
"I sympathised with her and went home. I later heard that she gave my child child a punishment of writing her name on the board the next day,” said the mother.
In a letter dated November 11, the parents said the teacher was being physically abusive to the children.
Education department spokesperson Muzi Mahlambi said the department discourages the abuse of children in all forms.
“We have a report that one of the pupils was injured when the teacher scratched her with a nail,” said Mahlambi.
He said the department would take disciplinary action against the teacher if it found any truth to the allegations.