The Education Ministry must commit all resources to understand and deal with bullying in schools and also at the same time take appropriate action on the bullies who traumatise the victim in such a cruel and unforgivable manner.

As reported in The Star newspaper Uproar over violent school bullies , a female secondary student was bullied and her hair cut off. The dastardly event was uploaded to YouTube .

The school bullies have been identified and suspended for 14 days. Apart from making the bullies apologise to the victim, no other detailed studies were being conducted on the root cause of the incident.

It is obvious that the innocent victim was subjected to mental torture and physical violence in which I pray this is not the norm in our national schools today.

However, I am shocked to note that the other classmates seem to condone this act by ignoring her cries of help.

Basically bullying take the form of two aspects. Mental bullying and physical bullying.

The mental bullying is much harder to identify as it involves verbal abuse, threats and derogatory remarks leading to mental anguish of the bully victim, leaving no apparent evidence.

A victim of this kind of abuse would normally be able to recover much better than those who are also subjected to physical abuse. Thus normally these cases go unreported.

Extreme physical bullying often leaves injuries and scars and can be a clear indication of a bully victim. It should be acted upon not swept under the carpet and classified as normal physical activity injuries.

I am not too sure how many parents and guardians would take comfort that schools are supposed to be safe places after reading about this.

Normally a bully would subjected the victim to verbal torment a long time before the actual act of physical bullying.

A victim of bully normally comprises those physically weak, introvert characters and those different from others.

Not too long ago, The Star highlighted the fact that LBGT communities are at the mercy of being bullied.

It is not far-fetched to conclude that those with sexuality and gender issues are also the targets of bullies. In addition to this, there have been cases where the school bully is a person of authority such as a prefect or class monitor, thus being able to get away with the act easily.

It seem that our schools need to do more to educate students on the need to respect each other no matter what colour, race, gender, religion etc. Basically no discrimination.

Teachers must be more vigilant to look out for victims of bullies and deal with the matter appropriately.

Our education need to teach young minds that doing nothing when an act of bullying is occurring is not right. Schools must have proper channels where witnesses can report such acts of terror with the identities of those reporting the matter kept secret.

While all efforts must be made to ensure no such acts of bullying takes place in school, it is hoped that the Education Ministry also take steps to identify and study the main causes which led to these kind of acts, instead of just flip-flopping on the teaching of science and mathematics in whatever language and changing facts in history subjects.

While there is an overwhelming call to take punitive action against the bully, there is a need to be tactful here.

Sometimes the school bully is also the bully victim elsewhere such as at home with abusive parents, relatives and/or siblings.

Maybe the child is also going through a hard time such as parents undergoing a divorce or family disputes where the poor child has no freedom of expression and his/her views ignored, thus exerting his or her "authority" in school.

An abusive person can also be due to being the only male child in a family of many or all sisters.

At the end of the day, there are many factors involved in a bullying case and there is a need for proper studies and statistics on bullying incidents in schools.

Are there proper counselors and physicist to deal with these kind of issues as in certain cases, both victim and bully are victims of circumstances?

Is the discipline teacher capable of dealing with the issue holistically? It is obvious that problems in school may be due to problems at home and after school hours.

More must be done to nip school bullying in the bud, in which there is a need to understand the causes of bullying,

Just taking punitive action for acts of bullying will probably not make the bully repent and understand what he/she has done is wrong.