Manama: Kuwait's education minister has set up a committee to probe the causes and extent of violence in schools.
The findings and recommendations to ensure zero-violence schools will be submitted in a special report to the government within three weeks, Dr Moodhi Al Hmood said.
Measures planned to help eradicate the phenomenon in schools include training teachers on ways to confront and contain acts of violence in cooperation with ministries and government agencies, the minister said.
Student behaviour experts will present their evaluation of the situation and religious figures will be encouraged to communicate with students to help curb the phenomenon, the minister said.
School principals will also provide figures about violence in which their students were implicated and will also contribute to the drive with their assessment of the extent of aggression cases and their understanding of their motives.
The role of parents-teachers associations should be re-invigorated in an attempt to help tackle violence, Al Hmood said.
The minister's emergency call came one week after a 14-year-old Kuwaiti student was stabbed to death in front of his school by another Kuwaiti student, 16, over personal disagreements.
The fatal stabbing prompted the interior ministry to seek urgent and decisive measures.
"The murder of the student is a big tragedy and should not be taken lightly. The increase in violence at Kuwait schools is really alarming," the interior ministry said.
"Violence in schools should be studied and means to end it should be found so that such incidents would not recur in the future. What happened at Abdullah Al Roudhan School should be a turning point in the way the educational and state institutions should deal with violence."
Last week, two teenagers, aged 18 and 20, were wounded in a fight between youngsters who used knives and sticks to settle scores near a car park.
