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Two teenage girls have been barred from a top Auckland school after two violent incidents, including one in which they beat up a man at a shopping mall as his young daughter watched.
The Mt Albert Grammar pair, aged 13 and 14, were told last night that they could no longer attend the co-ed school after the board of trustees ruled they should be "excluded".
Headmaster Dale Burden said this effectively meant the pair were expelled from MAGS, but the school had to find them somewhere else to study, as they were under 16.
"They'll stay on the school roll, but we have a moral obligation to place them somewhere else, whether that's another school or alternative education," said Mr Burden.
"We can't just leave them on the scrapheap. Loads of kids make huge mistakes. It doesn't mean they are written off for good."
The teenagers were filmed on CCTV beating up a middle-aged man on a concrete stairway at the Westfield St Lukes shopping mall early last month.
They kicked him in the head in what police say was an unprovoked attack.
His preschool-aged daughter looked on, crying, until he managed to walk away.
In the second attack, on March 22, both girls were once again involved in a brawl at the mall.
A person who saw the fight told the Herald on Sunday: "They just started jumping on each other. One of the girls ripped another girl's shirt, so she was fighting in her bra. They ripped out chunks of hair."
After the incidents, Westfield imposed a temporary ban on Mt Albert Grammar students in uniform visiting St Lukes mall.
Yesterday, Mr Burden said the police should lay charges against both girls.
Although they were not at school at the time, the fact they were in uniform made it Mt Albert Grammar's problem.
"Of course the children are always the parents' responsibility. But what they did, they did so in our uniform, so therefore it's brought the school into disrepute."
Mr Burden said both girls had been in trouble at school before, and one had been enrolled at MAGS for only five weeks.
The incidents follow another case of schoolgirl violence in which Wanganui Girls College student Robin de Jong, 15, was bashed by another female pupil in an attack filmed on another student's cellphone.
Mr Burden said such behaviour was shocking, because of the young age of the pupils and the fact that they were girls.
"But what we've got to be aware of in society is an increasing trend for more extreme behaviour at a younger age.
"For me, that just heightens the fact that interventions have to take place early in a kid's life - 13 and 14 is too late."
