A Carletonville teacher who headbutted a pupil in 2018, allegedly in a revenge attack for assaulting his wife, failed in his bid to have the sanction imposed on him set aside: a two-month suspension without pay.

The sanction against Dannie Beeslaar, who was deputy principal at Wonderfontein High School, was imposed by the Gauteng education department after it found him guilty of assaulting the grade 8 pupil “by pushing him and hitting him with your head on his face” on May 18 2018.

Beeslaar, who is now principal of the same school, challenged the fairness of his suspension without pay before the Education Labour Relations Council, the bargaining council that serves the public education sector.

The bargaining council was required to determine whether there was an unfair labour practice in the conduct of the department towards Beeslaar. It passed its decision this week, dismissing Beeslaar's claim.

Before the bargaining council, Beeslaar testified before the bargaining council he went to the boys' toilets where he found the complainant pupil and other pupils.

He said the other pupils left the toilets running, but the complainant pupil remained behind smoking a cigarette.  Beeslaar said he then had a word with the pupil, reprimanding him for assaulting his wife.

Beeslaar said he did not assault the pupil when he was alone with him in the toilets.

The department’s version was that Beeslaar had assaulted the pupil while he remained with him in the toilets alone. It said Beeslaar ought to have taken the pupil to his office for an open talk.

The bargaining council said the deputy principal had no justifiable reason to remain with the pupil in the toilets alone.

“The inference that could be drawn from the proven facts is that (Beeslaar) isolated the complainant learner to assault him and that he knew there will be no witnesses to his horrible headbutting of a learner.

“This kind of assault on a learner was wrong, inhumane, and traumatising within the democratic dispensation that provides for the paramount interests of learners in a safe learning environment,”  the bargaining council's commissioner Luyanda Nkwenkwe Dumisa said.

Dumisa said though corporal punishment has been banned since 1996, teachers were meting it out as a means to discipline pupils.

“Many reports of learners being hit, thrown with objects or verbally abused on school premises indicate that the ban on corporal punishment is not being properly enforced in schools, and teachers are not being properly held accountable when they physically abuse a learner.”

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