Corporal punishment is not acceptable as it is against the best interest of the student.
This has been stressed by the Director of Fiji Human Rights and Anti Discrimination Commission Ashwin Raj who says that there are other avenues to discipline students.
He also highlighted that although rights come with responsibilities and no one, whether it be a student, teacher or school administrator can abuse that, Fiji has come a long way and corporal punishment is today no longer acceptable.
This comes after, Prime Minister, Voreqe Bainimarama highlighted that he is shocked to see that students are using human rights as an excuse for their indiscipline and bad behavior towards teachers.
Bainimarama adds he cannot imagine that any of the parents nowadays did this during their school days.
Raj says they now need to systematically target schools on some of these issues that include bullying, corporal punishment and indiscipline.
He also stresses that in an effort to ensure that students are obedient, the Ministry of Education, administrators and teachers need to think of non-primitive measures to Human Rights compliant ways of disciplining students.
