SIYENDLE PUPILS DEMAND LESS HOURS, PUNISHED

MBABANE – “Reduce schools hours, we are overburdened with schoolwork.”

In a rather first of its kind, pupils of Siyendle Community High School have asked for less school hours with reduced homework. The request by the pupils is said to have taken the administration of the school by surprise to a point where they found themselves being punished for asking for less school hours. One of the pupils, *Sandla told this publication that the Form IV pupils of Siyendle Community High School, in the Shiselweni Region, felt overburdened by schoolwork and the long hours. He said due to the many subjects they learnt each day, they usually went home with a lot of homework and that meant they had no time left to revise or study what they had learnt that day.

He further explained that they decided to write an official letter to the school’s administration on March 13, requesting that the number of subjects they learnt a day be reduced. The letter was to be sent through the head boy on March 14 who, because being nervous, failed to submit the letter to the school’s administration. As such, the head boy held on to the letter for a couple of days. Sandla alleged that after the head boy said he could not deliver the letter to the school’s administration, the pupils approached a senior teacher, who advised them to make further attempts to have the letter sent to the head teacher through the head boy, as per school protocol. However, the letter was never delivered to the head teacher.

Sandla alleged that on March 19, the school’s administration called the whole Form IV class to the school hall, where the 60 pupils convened, and each one of them was given six strokes on the buttocks. Sandla claimed that they were then sent home and told not to come to school, but to have their parents come to the school. *Mrs Dlamini, a parent to one of the Form IV pupils, said her child came home and told her that she was to report to the school the next day for a meeting. Dlamini said she went to her child’s school, where she found other parents who had been summoned too.

She said; “Each parent went in alone. When I went in, the head teacher, deputy head teacher and two other teachers were in the room. “I was asked what my child had said to me. I told them that she had informed me that the school had asked us to come to the school and for them to remain at home.

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