Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha has said that physical punishment in schools is prohibited and has cautioned school officials about the practice.
Announcing the building of CBC classrooms at Allidina Visram School, Matiang’I alluded to a case in which a standard seven pupil at Gremon Education Centre in Bamburi, Mombasa, was allegedly beaten by the school director, saying that lawbreakers must be apprehended and prosecuted.
“You are not authorized to beat up a child, and under present legislation, anyone who lifts his hands and hits a youngster should be arrested,” the CS stated.
Magoha ordered the closure of the Gremon Education Center and the admission of children to public schools in the case of the Gremon Education Center student who was injured.
“My instructions have been quite clear if the school is not registered. “The simplest way to accomplish that is to shut it down, and if it’s a private school, it’s much easier,” Magoha said.
Caleb Mwangi, 13, is fighting for his life at Coast General Teaching and Referral Hospital after he was reportedly assaulted by the school’s director and colleagues for allegedly stealing chapatis.
Mwangi was reportedly kicked and whipped using water pipes and scalded with hot water after he picked five chapatis instead of one during supper on January 23.
Unestablished reports indicate that the 13-year-old was beaten with a horse pipe before hot water was poured on him then other students landed on him.
Doctors treating the boy at Makadara Hospital say that the boy was brought in with acute kidney injury and wounded genitals.
Magoha, has been seen to contradict himself after he weighed in on the debate, mulling over the return of the cane and adding that the police should book the destructive students after students took a toll to burn schools late last year.
These conversations touch on the rights of children. Applying a human rights-based approach in all its interventions holds that corporal punishment in schools violate both Kenyan law and international standards.
The Constitution, at Article 29, outlaws torture, corporal punishment as well as any other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.
In addition, Sections 13 and 18 of Children Act provides that a child shall be entitled to protection from physical and humiliating abuse by any person and shall not be subjected to torture, cruel treatment or punishment.
Corporal punishment breeds a culture of violence as it sends out the message that violence is socially acceptable — an entirely wrong message to be giving out to children, there is no evidence that corporal punishment yields the highest attainable level of discipline or any at all.
If it is applied inequitably because there is no way of regulating or controlling the power and approach utilized, which can end in death in some situations.
It creates a cycle of abuse in which victims repeat the violence by abusing or physically injuring their friends and/or siblings.