Georgian students to receive additional support

New education laws aim to give Georgian students more support at school.

Proposed changes to Georgian Education Laws could result in major changes to the role of school resource officers.

If the new laws are approved, a school resource officer will become a child protection officer. Furthermore, the Office of Resource Officers of Educational Institutions of Georgia will change its name to the Office of Child Protection, Mediation, and Psychology.

Under the planned reform, the minimum age of a resource officer will increase to 23, instead of 20, the current minimum.

The proposed changes to the Georgian Laws of General Education and Professional Education have already been sent to Parliament for discussion.

"A resource officer is no longer someone who punishes a pupil, but is someone who protects them and creates a safe school environment. Similarly, there needs to be judicial changes as well as changes in the requirements toward the officers qualification. So there already were trainings for them first and then they went through a selection process, Deputy Education Minister Lia Gigauri said.

The new resource officer role will involve helping a pupil with making decisions about their future as well as planning a career. It will also involve meeting pupils with psychological problems and talk with them individually.

The Office of Child Protection, Mediation, and Psychology will have to provide all general educational institutions of Georgia with child protection officers before 2017.

The Resource Officer position was established in 2010 following a decision by the Saakashvili government.

At the time bullying was rife at many Georgian schools and research conducted by the United Nations revealed more than 47% of children had been victims of physical violence, mainly from their fellow pupils.

Dimitri Shashkini, the Education Minister at the time, believed stationing officers at schools would allow teachers to concentrate on teaching and leave the officers to worry about security. However some teachers and parents found it uneasy to have police-trained officers in classrooms.

Some people said the reform was a part of a wider problem in Georgia: that the government would take a heavy-handed approach when it felt public order was being threatened.