DPM orders probe on claims teacher used iron on student

By Bernama

Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin has directed the Kelantan Education Department to investigate thoroughly an allegation that a teacher used a hot iron on a student.

Appropriate action will be taken against the teacher if he is found to have used an iron to wake up the student at a Pasir Mas school for morning prayers as reported, he said.

Muhyiddin, who is also education minister, said: “The school must take this matter seriously because we have rules that the principal or disciplinary teacher must enforce.”

“If what the student claims is proven, we have to take appropriate action. Such conduct is unacceptable and we have to act against anyone guilty of it,” he told reporters after opening the BioMalaysia 2010 Conference and Exhibition here today.

The incident is said to have occured at Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Bunut Susu at Pasir Mas on October 12.

Muhyiddin said that schools are supposed to be safe places for students.

If people entrusted to protect students instead harm them, they must be punished even if they were a minority, he said.

On the proposal to improve UPSR, the primary school tests, he said that it was to make the teaching of subjects more inter-active and interesting.

He added that details of the proposal will be disclosed later.