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Today word went out on facebook and through the rumour mill that there had been mass expulsions at San Pedro high school after a female teacher shared a nude picture with a male student – who then circulated it throughout the student body. But, that turned out to be a major exaggeration: tonight 3 second form boys are suspended after they circulated a bogus nude picture claiming it was a female teacher, when, in fact, it was not. Today we caught up with the Minister of Education, Patrick Faber and he told us that in cases like these, the responsibility rests not with the ministry, but with the school's board of management.

Hon. Patrick Faber - Minister of Education

"If it is happening in a high school I keep saying to all concern that the first line of authority - and probably in many cases the final line of authority is the school's board of management. So we're hoping that they will be acting on the matter promptly as we. We have to be concern but again it goes with the time and what's happening in the larger world. We cannot expect that situations like this won't occur. If we're living in a time when technology is blowing out of proportion - this is why we need to be careful. We need to move with the change and we need to make regulations that go along with that change in order to keep things in line. Yes I'm very concerned but I'm not alarmed, it's not happening in any alarming manner just as yet and I'm confident that given the mechanisms we have now, that we're able to deal with these situations. I'm pretty sure they won't stop, given the environment we're living in now."

Courtney Weatherburne

"Sir you brought up a good point - that leads to my next question in terms of social media and looking at the wider perspective of this issue. Given that there is a free flow of connectivity between the teacher and the students. And as we've seen with the students at Mopan Technical and teacher Pook - we would want something further than that, it's an open free flow of communication. Is there any regulation you guys are working on? And looking at pictures and what we've seen with the conversation with the teacher and students - to me that is alarming."

Hon. Patrick Faber

"Well I'm not saying that the individual situations that have happened are not alarming, I'm saying I don't think it's happening at an alarming scale where you need to say the entire education system is under attack."

And the board of management did address this issue. We spoke with the Vice Principal of the San Pedro High School, Giselle Flores this evening and she told us that it all started as a prank on another female student. Apparently these boys downloaded a nude picture of a woman and circulated it – claiming that it was a female student.. but the prank doesn't stop there. Flores elaborated on the incident and clarified a few details.

Giselle Flores - Vice Principal, San Pedro High School

"First of all I would like to clarify that it is not a female teacher. The students were alleging that this was a teacher at our high school - but in reality this particular picture they students were sharing had been reported by another female student that other male students were trying to pin on her - saying that it was her nude picture. Now, 2 weeks ago the female teacher came to report to us that these students were circulating an alleged nude picture of herself. The moment the principal, Ms. Maria Flota and myself saw the picture, we realised it was the same picture that the other young lady had come to report to us. The first picture that you are mentioning is the exact same picture that the female student reported that the male student was alleging was her. So when we say that exact same picture, we knew that could not be the teacher if they had tried to pin it on a student."

Courtney Weatherburne

"Wow, so pretty much this all started off as just a very mean prank?"

Giselle Flores

"Yes it is. It started off for a female student and then these young men took it to the next level and tried to say it's one of our female teachers which is a complete lie."

Courtney Weatherburne

"We also understand that several students or several of the boys have been expelled from school is that true?"

Giselle Flores

"That's another clarification that needs to be made. We have not expelled any student from our institution. What happened was that once the report came in - we started to make queries from these young men. We had then write an incident report of how they go the pictures, how they spread the pictures and from then these queries were looked at and the disciplinary committee sat down and discussed what action we should take. The action we decided was that these boys need to go on a 5 days suspension."

Again we stress: The nude pictures that have been circulating the school and probably the community, are not of the female student or teacher. Also the 3 boys have been suspended for 5 days for sharing these pictures. When they return to school they will be sent to the counsellor.