Minister of Education Dr Ismail Shafeeu has revealed that 26 incidents of bullying have been reported from inside schools around the country since the start of this year.
Speaking at a news conference held by government authorities to address the video circulating on social media of a child being bullied inside a mosque in Alif Alif atoll Rasdhoo, Education Minister Dr Shafeeu stated that when such disturbing incidents become common within our communities, it causes the public to question how such cases are handled within the Education system.
Addressing concerns by the people, Dr Ismail revealed that 26 cases of bullying had been reported from inside schools just this year.
"That's a lot of cases of bullying," said Dr. Ismail. "However, if you consider the whole sphere of interactions, I would say that if we do enough work at the current level, these are problems that can be solved."
“There are many programs in the Ministry of Education to prevent bullying, in professional development activities for teachers at various levels, awareness activities for parents and civic programs for students to avoid such things as anger management (anger control). We have many programs that work on familiarizing children with signs of inappropriate behavior so they can recognize and move away from it."
The Education Minister went on to say that the biggest challenge in addressing incidents of bullying among children is that there is a lack of competent and trustworthy counselors in schools to engage with children under such difficult circumstances.
Minister Dr Shafeeu explained that while there were 225 government schools in operation around the country, only 51 schools had counsellors. He added that the government had, under the direction of President Dr Muizzu, begun looking into special training programs to train and develop teachers, SEN teachers and counselors to better address the prevalence of bullying among school children.
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