The situation
During break, from the walkway, you see three second-year secondary students surrounding a classmate near the court. They take his backpack, throw it between them and chant a nickname you have already heard before in class. The student does not react: he picks his notebooks up off the ground while the others laugh. The guidance counsellor mentioned to you last week that this same student has been absent several times this month and that his family says he “doesn’t want to come to school”. The bell rings and the groups scatter as if nothing had happened. You have the next period free and you have to decide what to do with what you have just seen.
◆ The comment on each course of action is generated by AI from this section’s legal framework, whose official texts are in Spanish. It orients you; always verify the article in the legal framework.
For whoever facilitates
Facilitator’s notes
The Criminal Code describes harassment in the words of the schoolyard: mockery, verbal aggression, exclusion and isolation “in the educational sphere” in order to shame, humiliate or hinder a person’s development (Art. 121, Ley 74-25, as worded by Ley 44-26); when the victim is a child or adolescent, the protection is raised (Art. 122, Ley 74-25). Here the ones responsible are students: a child under 13 is never criminally responsible, and an adolescent aged 13 to 17 answers before the specialised criminal justice system for adolescents, not with the penalties of the Code (Arts. 223 and 225, Ley 136-03 — the Code for the Protection of Children and Adolescents). The right plane is the disciplinary and coexistence one: school bullying is a very serious breach (Art. 23, Ordenanza 05-2023 — the MINERD school-coexistence rules) and the school has mandatory mediation teams (Art. 10, Ordenanza 05-2023). Options a and d complement each other: protect first, then document and activate the internal route — teacher, Equipo de Gestión, Orientación y Psicología. Option b is right to listen in private, but waiting leaves the student alone and loses the pattern of absences, which is a serious signal. Option c risks humiliation, and exemplary punishment in front of the group contradicts the positive discipline the Normas de Convivencia (the school-coexistence rules) require. Question for the group: what early signs of isolation are we seeing each week, and who are we telling about them?
The team’s commentary
Two readings of this scenario
Español — The Spanish version is the reference text — the legal verification described in the audit report was carried out on it.
Audit report — the independent legal review of this material, with the errors we found and corrected (page in Spanish).
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