News Dubai

Sharjah - Teacher suspended
Last Updated: Friday 16 Nov, 2007
By Ali Al Shouk

Sharjah - A teacher accused of drunkenly ordering some members of his class to dance at the front of the room has been suspended pending the outcome of a Ministry of Education investigation. Meanwhile, the three pupils who danced in front of their friends have been suspended for three days for their part in the incident as the Ministry investigation gets under way.

The Australian, who teaches English, works at the Ma’adh Bin Jebel School in Sharjah, but has come under scrutiny after students claimed he turned up for a lesson drunk. It was also claimed that he then told some of his pupils to dance in order to earn extra credit. One student has even said that some of his classmates had captured the incident, showing the teacher laughing and clapping, on their mobile phones.

And yesterday the head of Sharjah Educational Zone, Fawzya Gareb, revealed the teacher had been suspended until further notice. “Sharjah Educational Zone has ordered the Australian teacher not to return the school until some instructions come from the Ministry,” he said. The teacher is believed to have admitted to investigators that the incident did occur, but said he was only trying to make the pupils happy and didn’t realise that he was causing any offence, adding that the dancing only happened at the very end of the class.

However, the parents of the suspended boys were far from happy. They said they could not understand why their children had been penalised for doing something a teacher had asked them to do. “Most of the students are only teenagers so they can’t really do anything and in this case the teacher ordered them to dance. They shouldn’t be suspended,” said one parent.