School given final warning over foot-kissing incident

Manama: Bahrain’s education ministry on Sunday issued a final warning to a private school after it failed to take appropriate action to deal with an incident in which a teacher forced a student to kiss her foot.

The school on Saturday told the ministry that it suspended the teacher for one week and withheld her salary during the suspension over the incident. The school also claimed that it had shifted the four-year-old student to another class to avoid dealing with the teacher and that the father was satisfied with the measures.

However, the ministry moving ahead with its own investigation discovered that there was no formal probe into the incident and that the father had never been contacted.

The school owner, principal and Arabic section head were summoned on Sunday afternoon by the minister who gave them a final warning for failing to investigate properly the incident and for presenting false information to the ministry.

The education ministry has come under tremendous pressure in social networks to take stringent action against the teacher and the school for humiliating the student amid claims that her ill-treatment was sect-based.