Child Rights Commission faults Mumbai school for targeting student

In a new development in an ongoing saga of a school 'targetting' a pupil, Ryan International School has written a remark - ‘problematic child' on the School Leaving Certificate of a class IX student.

When the child's parents presented it to the Child Rights Commission (CRC) during the hearing on Wednesday, the panel condemned it and the Chembur school has been given an ultimatum of seven days to submit an affidavit explaining the choice of words.

The child's parents and school have been in a scuffle for a while now since the parents complained against corporal punishment by a teacher. Later, the school suspended the student, following which the parents approached CRC. The CRC was hearing the matter on Wednesday for the second time.

The school representative failed to be present for the hearing and so has been served with an ultimatum.

Secretary of the Maharashtra State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (MSCPCR) after hearing the parents, said, "The school's action is completely unacceptable. There was no reason to make such a remark on the child's school leaving certificate."

After learning that there was no representative from school for the hearing, Tripathi instructed the staff to send a final notice to the school to explain it's action. He sternly said, "If the school fails to do so then we have not way but to assume that the school does not have a valid explanation for its act and the case will then be closed for final decision."

The child's father, who was present for the hearing, said, "The school has been targeting my son unnecessarily. We hence decided to move him to another school. My son is now in class X and we certainly were not ready to be subjected to such torture in his much important academic year of board examination. This remark on the school leaving certificate not only maligns his background record for the future, it also has adverse effect on his psychology. We had to present it to the CRC to show how the school is on an agenda against my son."

Spokesperson for the Ryan Group of Institution, Neti Srinivasan, was unavailable for comment.