Epress.am News from Armenia
A second grade student of the N22 school in the Armenian third-largest city of Vanadzor was “periodically subjected to abuse” by the head of the class, the Helsinki Citizens Assembly Vanadzor office (HCAV) was informed by the child’s mother.
In February 2017, according to the mother, the teacher, N. Antonyan, hit the child and bruised his ear for unsatisfactory performance of a task; the child also urinated out of fear, while the teacher made him remain in his seat until the end of the class to further humiliate him in front of his classmates.
After receiving the complaint, HCAV appealed to the Ministry of Education and Science, and the headmaster of the school. The ministry promised to look into the case and restore the child’s right to education; headmaster D. Melkonyan, meanwhile, insisted that the mother “had in fact exaggerated.” According to the headmaster, the child’s bruises did not appear because of the teacher’s actions, but as a result of a quarrel with classmates, which, he said, had ended after the intervention of the deputy headmaster.
Class Head N. Antonyan, in turn, admitted that her behavior had been in appropriate for a teacher; she said she had reprimanded the student too loudly and had told him that he “stinked.” The teacher has received a warning from the headmaster for her “unbefitting conduct.”
As for the child, he has already been transferred to another school in Vanadzor.