THERE’S been a claim that some students in the Western Division have been fainting at a school as a result of “starvation”.
The claim was made by a school teacher Ravind Kumar in Ba last week during the consultation on the review of the Education Act.
He said some parents continued to neglect their children despite “a parental engagement framework” that clearly stated the roles and responsibilities of parents and guardians towards their children’s education.
“We have children coming to school without food, some children collapse by recess or eleven,” Mr Kumar said.
“We have to rush them to the hospital, then we find out that they did not eat anything in the morning.
“We found a few cases where parents do not wake up in the morning to prepare their breakfast and lunch. It’s the poor child that has to wake up and prepare their own breakfast and lunch and come to school.”
Mr Kumar said that some of the students they had identified, had been providing them with meals through their canteens, “but there are some who are shy to tell us that they did not bring any food”.
Mr Kumar said teachers were only made aware of those incidents by the students’ peers.
“Parents continue to neglect the attendance of their children in school.
“Some parents bring their children to big town schools, get them enrolled, they lie to the school heads or the enrolment team that they are staying in the town’s vicinity.
“They leave their children to rent and then they go back to their villages. They don’t care what their children do.”
Mr Kumar said some of those students’ frequent nightclubs were because of a lack of supervision.
He called for the Act to include mandatory policies for parents to attend to their children in terms of providing them the basic needs and monitoring their attendance.
Education Ministry Legal Draft consultant David Solvalu said a new Child Protection Act 2024 had yet to come into force.
“That law is the new framework supposed to roll out soon, depending on the ministry, that is the one that deals with neglect,” he said.
“Neglect falls under the definition of instances where a child needs care and protection and there’s a frame that’s been created around neglect, responsibility, and having the obligation to report when they think the child is in need of child protection.”
Questions were also sent to the Education Minister Aseri Radrodro regarding this issue.
