One child with a fractured nasal bone. Another child, in another school, in another part of the city, physically attacked during the school day. Two reports, the same date, the same sentence from the police: "measures are being taken to fully clarify the case." What exactly is being clarified, and when will someone stand in front of the parents and say what the school is doing?

In the yard of the "Tihomir Miloshevski" primary school in Volkovo, outside class hours, a children's game ended in a beating. The attack was preceded by a short argument between the children. After it, one of them allegedly called other minors who surrounded the 14-year-old and punched him in the head.

The boy, a ninth-grade pupil, was admitted to the emergency department of the "8 September" city hospital at around 10 p.m. The diagnosis: a fractured nasal bone, bruising under the eyes and other head injuries. After the examination he was sent for further scans and kept until around one in the morning, then released for treatment at home.

The same day, at the Skopje police directorate at 4 p.m., a 50-year-old mother reported that at around 11:40 a.m. her son had been physically attacked by a classmate at a primary school in the Chair area. Not in the yard after class - during the school day, inside the school.

The bulletin works, the system does not

Both cases appeared in the daily police bulletin and then in the media with the same standby formulation about measures being taken. The interior ministry did its job - report filed, case opened. But in neither case is there any mention of what the school is doing, what the inspectorate is doing, whether the psychological service was involved at all.

That is the difference worth noticing. When a child is hurt on the street, we know who is responsible. When a child is hurt in a schoolyard or in a corridor during class, responsibility is split across so many addresses that in the end it belongs to no one. And the parent holding a head scan gets a sentence about measures being taken.

Both pupils went home. One with splints on his nose. The question the institutions are avoiding is not which child hit which - the police will establish that. The question is how many reports like these have to pile up in one daily bulletin before somebody from the education system answers to the public.