KUALA LUMPUR Malaysia
Malaysia's Education Ministry will issue specific guidelines on how teachers should discipline students following an outcry over several recent cases that were condemned as student abuse, news reports and an official said Friday.

Education Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said the decades-old education rules would be amended to guide teachers on meting out appropriate punishment for disobedient students, The Star and the New Straits Times reported.

The existing rules are "too general" and need to be amended to ensure "that they are clear to everyone," The Star quoted Hishammuddin as saying.

Hishammuddin's comment follows an outcry after it was revealed that a teacher made nearly 140 teenage girls squat in a fish pond at a boarding school on Borneo island last week.

The teacher, 27, who said she wanted to punish the students for repeatedly throwing their sanitary pads in the toilets, has since apologized to the students and parents. Education officials have reprimanded her but will not suspend her.

Hishammuddin said amending the rules would be designed to guide teachers rather than spare disobedient students.

"This is to protect our teachers. If they follow the Education Rules properly, there is no reason for things to go wrong," the Times daily quoted him as saying.

A ministry official, who declined to be named because he is not authorized to make public statements, said the rules were expected to be clarified by the end of the year a move the ministry has been working on since last year.

Ministry officials did not give any details as to how the rules would be amended and whether the ministry would continue to allow caning students for serious offenses such as smoking.

© Copyright 2007 by DiverseEducation.com

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