Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath is launch­ing a probe in­to al­le­ga­tions that a Form Two stu­dent was al­leged­ly abused and bul­lied by a fe­male Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion teacher at a school in the St Patrick Dis­trict.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the teacher al­leged­ly forced the child to pull down his pants.

In a Face­book post, the boy’s par­ent wrote: “My son is a stu­dent of Form 2:1. He was abused and bul­lied to­day by the phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion teacher of that form. He did not have his PE uni­form to­day be­cause of per­son­al rea­sons, so this teacher de­cid­ed she would hu­mil­i­ate him. He wasn’t the on­ly child who didn’t have the uni­form. She asked him what he had on un­der his school clothes. He said a t-shirt and box­ers. She then told him she want­ed to see. He told her a cou­ple of times he felt un­com­fort­able, but she in­sist­ed.”

The par­ent fur­ther claimed: “He then pulled his school pants and showed her, but that wasn’t enough. He told her his box­ers were snug on him, but she in­sist­ed on see­ing his pri­vate area and made him low­er his pants. He was fac­ing her, while the class was be­hind him. Every­one was laugh­ing and mak­ing fun of him. He even­tu­al­ly did PE with his school pants and t-shirt.”

The par­ent de­scribed her son as a qui­et child who was now trau­ma­tised.

“Now he doesn’t want to go to school and is feel­ing un­com­fort­able to be around that teacher. She was al­so de­mand­ing that he do PE in his box­ers. Why didn’t she get a male teacher to as­sist her in pri­vate? Why did she let it get so far as to hu­mil­i­ate him? Why didn’t the oth­er stu­dents get this treat­ment? Al­so, if this was a fe­male stu­dent and a male teacher, what would the sit­u­a­tion be? I want an­swers.”

In re­sponse, Min­is­ter Dowlath said the al­le­ga­tions in the post must first be ver­i­fied. He ad­vised the par­ent to re­port the mat­ter of­fi­cial­ly to the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry.

Mean­while, TTUTA pres­i­dent Michael Lum Kin said the as­so­ci­a­tion was un­aware of any such in­ci­dent in­volv­ing an ed­u­ca­tor in South Trinidad.

“We ad­vise par­ents that if they have an is­sue, they should present it to the school and make an of­fi­cial re­port, rather than go­ing on so­cial me­dia to seek re­solve.”