CAIRO - Egypt's schools have been an active field for violence, sexual harassment, and killing during 2010 for varying reasons, a recent report says. The report, conducted by local NGO the Egyptian Centre for Human Rights, says the schools of the Egyptian capital Cairo were the most violent as they saw numerous cases of violence by teachers against their students, students against their teachers, and parents against the teachers of their children. “There were more than 100 cases of violence in the nation's schools in 2010,” the report says. “This violence covered all student ages from nursery school to secondary school,” it adds. It talks about a school student in the Upper Egyptian Governorate of Beni Suef, 250 kilometres south of Cairo, who stabbed his colleague and caused him severe injuries. It also refers to Egypt's worst curse, namely sexual harassment and says school girls were subjected to various cases of harassment from schools boys. “As students were shuffling back into their classrooms, six students from Alexandria, Qena, Aswan, and Port Said committed suicide, because they could not understand their lessons,” the study says. It adds that there were 14 victims of school violence in 2010, 13 school students were stabbed by their colleagues, and 33 cases of violence by teachers against their students. The report goes on to say that parents attacked the teachers of their children in 15, students attacked their teachers in seven cases, and parents attacked the colleagues of their children in five cases. Egypt's Education Minister Ahmed Zaki Badr has been criticised by human rights groups for promoting violence against students. Egypt, like most of developing countries, has school violence because of the crowded areas and that's an important factor in increasing violence in every place, the private lessons which make both students and teachers don't care about the school and vice versa, according to the report. A recent study by the Specialised National Councils showed that public schools nationwide have only 3,000 social counsellors advisers who, in theory, are responsible for handling students' social problems. Worse, the majority of these 3,000 do not have offices where they can carry out their work and, in general, school administrations give them the role of substitute teachers. Counsellors expected to deal with student's psychological problems, are virtually non-existent.
