The director general of Education department in Kirkuk has decided to halt promotions for ateacher who has beaten a student with stick beside sending him out of town and the procedures to be endorsed by Iraqi ministry of education.
A video circulated on social media networks on November 10th showed a teacher Al-Hikma Preparatory School in Kirkuk standing in front of a white board beating a student firmly three times by a mop stick in class and in front of the eyes of his classmates then reproaches him.
On November 11th, a committee of three members from the General Directorate of Education in Kirkuk upon request of ministry of education in Baghdad visited the school and interrogated the teacher and the students of the class where the incident took place.
The committee has prepared a report for Kirkuk education department and the ministry in Baghdad.
A source in Kirkuk Education Directorate anonymously told KirkukNow, "the committee has filed its report to the directorate general of education and it has been approved by the director general. Procedures will be taken."
“The teacher is to be sent to a school out of town to Daquq beside stopping all promotions for one year yet it should be confirmed by the ministry in Baghdad,” the source added.
The northern oil-rich city of Kirkuk, located 238 kilometers north of Baghdad, is an ethnically mixed province for 1.6 million Kurds, Sunni and Shiite Arabs, and Turkmen. It has long been at the center of disputed territories between Baghdad and Erbil.
Iraq’s education infrastructure is in ruins in many parts of the country; one in every two schools is damaged and needs rehabilitation, says a report by UNICEF about education in Iraq.
A number of schools operate in multiple shifts in an attempt to accommodate as many students as possible, squeezing the little learning time that children have.
The report states that number of qualified teachers have dropped as the profession is a low paid tiring career. Besides, the Iraqi government has stopped employment since most of its revenues is spent in paying civil servants, mainly in the military, education and health sectors.
Footage of a teacher beating a pupil with a mop stick for laughing during a break in a Kiruku high school.
The investigative committee is supposed to publish its report yet it awaits approval of director general of education who is on a trip.
The teacher who beats the student is teaching English language while the student is in grade 11.
That beating of the student comes at a time when the students have not received textbooks yet despite the fact that the schools opened doors for 4-days class and 2-days electronic education for 2021-2022 new academic year on November 1st, excluding Kurdistan region which opened doors for class teaching Mid-September six days a week.
KirkukNow spoke with a section of the student’s classmates, who confirmed that “in the lesson the student was hit, it was vacant and there was no teacher in the class... The students, including the student who was beaten, were laughing when the teacher who was already angry walked in and hit the student by the mop stick several times."
