A mother has questioned the disciplinary measures at a primary school after her daughter was locked in a room on her own for several days.

Melody Albuoy claims her ten-year-old was secluded from other students for five school days without teachers notifying either her or her ex-husband.

She alleges that it’s because Purvis Primary principal Judith Alexander has a vendetta against her, that her daughter Mya received the “inhumane” discipline.

Ms Alexander would not comment yesterday. Mya’s teacher, Keva Evans, also refused to comment however the Ministry of Education said it is investigating Ms Albuoy’s concerns.

“There’s a Ministry level code of conduct that we use which enforces school policy,” said director of Standards and Accountability Lou Matthews.

“Schools do frame their discipline with respect to the policy. We take all parent complaints very seriously.

“When a parent calls myself or the assistant director for that school, we take the complaint and we try to get a good understanding of what happened and we try to mediate the situation.

“When you get a complaint, you don’t want to just jump to a conclusion. We try to hear both sides and reach a resolution that works.

“Purvis Primary, like all schools, has always been committed to ensuring the optimal learning for children. We fully support its efforts.”

Ms Albuoy said she was frustrated by what she saw as the Ministry’s refusal to “discipline staff and principals”.

“That kind of punishment is unheard of in the day. It’s personal because the principal doesn’t like me,” she claimed.

She said Mya was disciplined after she was wrongfully accused of playing around with a door as male students changed in a classroom after gym last Tuesday.

According to Ms Albuoy, a boy standing outside the room told Mya and another girl that the boys were still changing.

“He went into the classroom and came back a few minutes later and said ‘you can come in now’. The [other] female student went in and came out and said they weren’t finished yet.

“This was a door that pulls open when you turn it. The female student pushed on the door and her and the boy were fighting with the door knob. She called to my daughter help her push the door and [Mya] said no. The male student fell from pulling the door and then the teacher came.”

Ms Albuoy said her daughter was accused of preventing the boy from going in the classroom.

“She said ‘no it wasn’t me’, but the teacher went to the principal’s office. They took her to the principal’s office and took everything out of her desk and put it in the room. She cried all day.

“Because she is afraid of the principal and the teacher, she didn’t tell me or her dad.”

Ms Albuoy said she was very upset — not only at the punishment, which she called “inhumane”, but also because neither she nor her ex-husband were notified.

She said her child is not disrespectful or rude but admitted that if spoken to by an adult, she looks away or at the floor; she said such behaviour is normal for children at that age.

Ms Albuoy said a school counsellor contacted her to have a meeting but didn’t mention Mya had been placed in isolation. She learned what had happened after an e-mail was sent to Mya’s father.

“It’s a room with no monitoring or anything,” she said. “I asked her why they put her there and she went quiet. My daughter was told that she’s a liar.

“I have already called the Ministry about her [Mrs. Alexander]. She said [to Mya] ‘you’re a very bright girl but there’s a lot of people like you in prison’. They asked her ‘how do you feel being in this room?’ and she said ‘like prison’.

“I went down there yesterday and I said ‘my daughter’s not going back in that room’. It’s inhumane and against the law. Yesterday after we left, the principal called her down to say ‘your mother disturbed the whole upper level’.

Ms Albuoy claimed that her daughter was given work during the isolation period with no instruction as to how to do it. According to Ms Albuoy, when Mya returned to the class she asked the teacher how to do the work and was told to “figure it out”.

Ms Albuoy said she has reported the incident to Dr. Matthews and Freddie Evans at the Ministry of Education but hasn’t heard anything back.