Accusations and harassment of Merdzavan teacher are unacceptable – Deputy Minister of Education

Two days after the scandalous incident involving a history teacher, students, and parents at a school in the village of Merdzavan, Armavir region, tensions at the school have subsided.
The educational process continues as usual, and a new acting principal will be appointed soon, Araksia Svajian, Deputy Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sports, told Alpha News.

The deputy minister noted that the Merdzavan school is subordinate to the administration of the Armavir region, which is responsible for appointing a new principal. Araksia Svajian described the incident as unacceptable, particularly the negative treatment of the history teacher.

“The teacher has been working at this school for several months, the educational process went well. However, at some point, an issue arose due to certain factors. These factors often include parents, discussions between students, provocations from other teachers. I don’t want to violate the presumption of innocence or pinpoint the exact cause of the incident, but in every teacher-student relationship, there can be disagreements, which is not good. Here, it is important that the school’s teaching staff or the teacher who has a disagreement with the students be able to resolve the issue, but sometimes issues become too complex for a single teacher to handle. In such cases, other members of the school community should intervene: the class teacher, the deputy principal, the principal, the parent council. According to our information, this did not happen at Merdzavan school,” Svajian said.

The deputy minister added that the ministry is reviewing the history teacher’s activities both at Merdzavan and at other schools.

“But no matter what kind of activity a teacher carries out, or what interactions she has within a given incident, no one has the right to treat a teacher like that. If a teacher commits a violation or behaves unethically during the lesson, there are other ways to respond to this; appropriate mechanisms should be used. Accusations and harassment are unacceptable. This teacher maintained composure in this situation,” Svajian emphasized.