Teacher beaten by six students in Jiza — syndicate

AMMAN – A teacher in Jiza District was beaten by a group of six students on Tuesday, according to the Jordan Teachers Association (JTA). 

The assault on the teacher, identified as Yousef Harbi, raised the number of attacks against teachers in Jiza, some 30km south of Amman, to four in just two months.

Harbi was attacked by “a gang of students” who hit him with sticks while he was in class with elementary school students, the JTA said in a statement e-mailed to The Jordan Times on Wednesday.

The teacher was taken to a nearby hospital and filed a complaint against the assailants, who are secondary students, the JTA statement added. 

The JTA said Harbi’s colleagues staged a partial work stoppage to protest against the assault and urge authorities to put a stop to the “series of repeated attacks”.

JTA President Hussam Masheh said the authorities should be held responsible for the delay in drafting a law that would prevent assaults on teachers, according to the statement. 

In recent remarks to The Jordan Times, Abdul Rahman Zaben, the JTA member in Jiza, attributed assaults against teachers in the district to “the lack of strict security measures against perpetrators”.

Area residents, he said  disapprove of the ministry’s recent regulations that ban General Secondary Certificate Examination (Tawjihi) students from sitting for exams if they exceed the allowed absences, as well as its measures to prevent cheating during Tawjihi.

Students in the district, Zaben said, used to pass Tawjihi by cheating via mobile phones.