The boy’s father notified The Phuket News after he said he had approached the school, Baan Kajonkiet Nursery Pasak, but received no explantation of the incident last Thursday (June 29) that made sense.
The father presented a printed note – not on school letterhead but signed off as from the school’s management – apologising for the “unforeseen accident”.
“There is a child who locks himself inside the store room and the glass broke, fortunately there was nothing big thing which happen and everybody is safe,” the note read.
“We already made arrangement so that no such incident will happen again,” it added.
However, the father disputed the school’s account of the incident after he approached them directly.
“The teacher was talking with no sense and made up a story that my son was naughty and she actually saved him from his panic,” the father told The Phuket News by email.
“We found out… that it was a current practice to put naughty kids in a cupboard… my son told me his teacher pushed him on (the door) and then he broke the window.”
The father also argued that through observing the photograph of the broken door, that the glass pane appears to have been broken “from the outside and not the inside”.
Baan Kajonkiet Nursery Pasak responded in writing to The Phuket News yesterday (July 5), “Baan Kajonkiet Nursery Pasak can confirm that there was an incident at our Pasak campus, with the child in question, and we are still concluding an internal investigation into the reported event.
“The student in question was involved in a biting incident in the classroom at the time. During the lesson the student bit another child fairly badly, which the teacher noticed and reacted to immediately.
“Upon the teacher reacting, [the student] became extremely upset and ran into from the classroom storage area.
“The teacher followed the student and as he entered the storeroom he locked the door from the inside. The teacher was directly behind him and was able to see and hear him clearly at all times. He locked the storeroom door from the inside and couldn’t get it open,” they said.
The representative of the school said that the student then became extremely upset and smashed the glass pane in the door.
“The teachers removed him immediately when they could get him out safely,” they said.
“It is very fortunate that the student only received a graze on his chin and was treated with first aid. He calmed down and rejoined the rest of his classmates for the remainder of their school day without any further upset.”
“Our staff followed the correct policy and procedure in dealing with and reporting an incident of this sort. The entire class of students, as well as the class teacher, were witness to this situation and their stories all correspond to the footage from the classroom CCTV.”
“We have started to look for a stronger material to replace our door with to prevent this in the future,” they concluded.
Regarding the allegations that staff locked the boy in the storeroom, the school added today, “It is completely untrue as well as against school policy to punish a child in this manner at any time. Our school management and staff would not tolerate such an act by any member of staff. The storage area that our student locked himself into cannot be locked from the outside, only the inside.
“Also… the child in question had the smallest of grazes on his chin which did not even bleed. We merely cleaned it with antiseptic. So he was not injured.”