Bullying 'cannot be tolerated', says Ong Ye Kung on Mee Toh School incident

SINGAPORE — A series of viral Twitter posts describing alleged bullying at Mee Toh School has prompted a response from Education Minister Ong Ye Kung, who said the incident goes against society’s “fundamental values”.

The bullying involved a group of students who had picked on a Malay classmate and handed her notes with insults written on them.

In a Facebook post on Tuesday (March 10), Mr Ong said bullying is "wrong and cannot be tolerated anywhere, especially in schools”.

The incident "goes against some very fundamental values of what we stand for as a society”, wrote Mr Ong, who added that he was dismayed and troubled after reading about it.

"It does not matter whether the students might have done it out of mischief or that they are only Primary 5 students; the fact is that the victim felt that it was a racist act, and that makes it even more unacceptable," he wrote.

Twitter user @4YSLZ had first posted about the incident in a series of tweets on March 6.

In the tweets, she said that one of her sister's classmates at Mee Toh School had thrown insulting notes in her sister's face.

She added that this was not the first time her sister had been bullied and that she had been called names, cyberbullied and had her uniform vandalised in the past.

The user claimed that she had emailed the school and the Ministry of Education (MOE) about the bullying, and also confronted her sister's teachers about it, but nothing had been done.

In his post, Mr Ong wrote that Mee Toh School will follow up with appropriate disciplinary actions for the students involved.

"Our values of kindness, respect for others, cohesiveness as a multi-racial society must be inculcated from a young age, with the collective effort of families, schools and community. This should be a lesson for all students to learn from," he wrote.

TODAY has contacted MOE for more information.