A racial slur incident involving five white pupils from Hillcrest High School stemmed from a private WhatsApp group that has no affiliation to the Durban institution, the school governing body (SGB) said on Thursday.
Byron Creed, the chairman of the SGB, said the school never swept the issue under the carpet as previously reported in the media.
“It was given the full attention of the school disciplinary committee who investigated the issue at hand. There is a school process to follow and the school has informed the [provincial] department of education,” said Creed.
He said the school intervened once the snippets of the WhatsApp content went public on social media this year, noting that a disciplinary meeting was arranged and held in June between the school’s committee, the offending learners, and their parents.
“In the meeting, the five learners expressed their remorse as they did not fully understand the connotation of the words and the history of the words they had written in the WhatsApp group chat,” said Creed.
The pupils flagrantly used the K-word and N-word while chatting on WhatsApp in 2021.
Creed added that the parents had apologised to the school for their children’s behaviour and promised to educate them on the issue.
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