The Act amends article 68 of the Education Act 2004 to state:

“(1) All schools and educational institutions shall, in consultation with the Principal Secretary and in accordance with the relevant regulations, formulate and enforce rules of conduct and discipline of the students. (…)

(3) A teacher or headteacher or a person employed by a school, whether on a part-time or full-time basis, shall not administer corporal punishment as a disciplinary measure.”

This prohibition is however undermined by the existence of a legal defence in the Children Act 1982 which provides for the right of teachers “to administer proper punishment” (art. 70) and is still to be formally repealed. The Government has confirmed that corporal punishment is prohibited in schools and that its department of Social Affairs is pushing to remove corporal punishment from the Children Act.

While the Global Initiative welcomes this step towards full prohibition, in the Seychelles corporal punishment of children is still lawful in homes, alternative care and day care settings, and penal institutions. In January 2018, the Government of the Seychelles reiterated to the Committee on the Rights of the Child its commitment to enacting prohibition of corporal punishment in all settings. The current review of the Children Act 1982, the Civil Code and the Penal Code provide perfect opportunities to fulfil this commitment and grant Seychelles’ children equal protection from assault.

For more information, see our country report on Seychelles

The post Seychelles prohibits corporal punishment in schools first appeared on End Corporal Punishment of Children.

This new report by the Global Initiative, published jointly with Save the Children, charts progress towards prohibition of corporal punishment in schools and identifies the states where progress is not being made. The report sets out the human rights standards relating to prohibition of corporal punishment, summarises research documenting the continued use of corporal punishment in schools and together with extracts from national legislation authorising corporal punishment as well as from laws prohibiting it, describes how laws can be reformed to achieve abolition.

There is information on implementing prohibition in practice and on national and international campaigns on the issue. Identifying immediate opportunities for law reform in at least 46 of the 73 states where prohibition has not yet been fully achieved in schools, the report is both a call to action to end violent punishment of children in all places of learning and a tool for advocacy to make this happen through law reform and other measures.

As Professor Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, the Independent Expert who led the UN Study, writes in the Foreword to the report:

“Can anything be more anti-educational than deliberately using violence to discipline children? …”

Towards non-violent schools: prohibiting all corporal punishment, Global report 2015 – published in English and in Spanish and launched at the 6th World Congress on School Violence and Public Policies in Lima, Peru, May 2015 – is available here (in English and Spanish).

A limited number of hard copies is available for advocacy purposes, email info@endcorporalpunishment.org.

The post New global report on prohibiting corporal punishment in schools first appeared on End Corporal Punishment of Children.