DOHA: Education authorities in Qatar will now allow school managements to call in the police to deal with student violence.
The Supreme Education Council (SEC) has, in fresh guidelines for Independent schools to discipline students and deal with violence, said law-enforcement agencies can be called in for help if the situation demands that.
Local Arabic daily Al Raya reported that so far the practice has been that in the case of group fights and student violence the school investigated the matter, prepared a report and submitted to the police of the area concerned. But now the police could straightaway be called in, in case there are physical fights and skirmishes in a school, if the school administration feels that the police intervention is necessary.
The daily said it has a copy of the fresh guidelines, which authorise the schools to make parents pay for damages caused by students in violence.
The new instructions have come in the form of amendments to the disciplinary guidelines issued by the SEC to Independent schools last year. The amendments are intended to curtail student violence while the original guidelines focused more on absenteeism, said the daily.
The guidelines authorises school disciplinary committees to suspend students from the school for three to five days depending on the nature of breach of rules and recommend to a student to the SEC for transfer to another school if a breach is repeated several times over.
Contacted for comment by this newspaper, a member of the Central Municipal Council (CMC), public representative body, said the SEC should review its decision as police action could affect the students’ future.
“Calling the police to deal with minor scuffle among students or some other minor problems is not advisable,” said Mubarak Fraish. That could adversely impact their future. The students are young.
He, however, added that if they show criminal behaviour like showing or using knives and other weapons then, of course, the police should be called in, said Fraish.
He said Qatari schools (a reference to government-run Independent Schools) are not known for serious student violence. Most of the time the fights are between soccer club fans, he said. The fans of one local sports club would fight with the fans of another local club, he added.
The Peninsula
