Obec denies pupil pressured to quit

The Office of Basic Education Commission (Obec) has denied a high school student who flashed a threefinger salute during a ceremony at Benjamarachutit School in Nakhon Si Thammarat has been pressured by the school to leave.

Obec secretary-general Amporn Pinasa said yesterday no school director or teacher had called the boy in for a reprimand or pressured him to quit the school.

Mr Amporn was responding to reports that the boy, a Mathayom 2 (Grade 8) student attending an English-instructed study programme had been told by the school to quit.

Mr Amporn said the boy had stood up and raised the three fingers while other students were sitting down in the schoolyard to perform a ceremony paying homage to King Chulalongkorn marking Chulalongkorn Memorial Day on Friday.

The annual event was an expression of gratitude to the monarch to whose memory the school was founded.

The school allowed the student to go home early at the end of the ceremony and did not issue any disciplinary warning, Mr Amporn said.

Later that day, the boy’s mother phoned Phutinan Hengsiri, the deputy school director, to say she had been troubled as she was not able to change her son’s behaviour, she said. The mother said she intended to withdraw the boy from the school.

Mr Amporn said the deputy director told the mother the boy would not be forced to leave the school and conveyed moral support to her.

The mother told teachers that no school administrators had disciplined the boy or put pressure on the family. It is not known if the boy intends on returning to the school in the wake of the incident.