I refer to the article "Caning not included" on asiaone.com. The article is about the sensational story of an ex Singaporean scholar being caught in England for downloading child pornography and how his stint in his teenage years, where he was caught for peeping in a primary girl's school toilet and was caned, was omitted from the MOE's disciplinary system.

Personally I believe that the school has done no wrong. Educators have said before that they would usually cane the student and leave the incident unrecorded and this is understandable, educators will think twice before listing offences in the MOE's tracking system, as this would result in the pupil being blacklisted by the MOE for life, thus this option is only reserved for problem students or very serious offences.

In his teenage years, Jonathan Wong has been described as a soft spoken student with exceptionally good grades with no prior discipline problems. In this context, it is no surprise that the teachers decided to punish him by public caning and omitt the offence from the disciplinary tracking system as they believed that he was a pupil with much potential, he would learn from his mistakes and they didn't want to any of his future prospects in life due to what seemed like a minor lapse of judgement at that time. Perhaps they could have sent the student to counselling following the caning, to monitor his behaviour and prevent such a problem from reoccuring inthe future

Thierry