Four class nine students of a city school were expelled and issued transfer certificates in the middle of the academic year.
Two of them had written graphic sexual content in a diary, while the other two had helped them hide it from the teacher. The incident took place in the 2nd week of November. Since then, their parents and child rights activists have made repeated requests to the school to provide counselling instead of taking such a drastic step, but to no avail. The school wasn’t available for comment. A complaint has been filed with the Karnataka State Commission for Protection of Child Rights by the parents saying TCs were issued without counselling.
The commission has summoned the parents, school authorities as well as the officials of the Department of Public Instruction for a hearing on Wednesday. Kripa Amar Alva, chairperson of the commission, said a decision on the future course of action will be taken after listening to all parties involved.
Suchitra Rao, who works in the field of child rights and child protection, said the school management was at fault for issuing transfer certificates. “There is no proper sex education in school and parents do not talk about it. With media influence, adolescent children do not know how to do deal with these issues,” she said.
