CBSE constitutes a panel to frame comprehensive school safety guidelines

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has constituted a committee to frame “comprehensive” guidelines for safety and security of students in its schools. “The detailed guidelines shall be brought out by the Board shortly,” the board's deputy secretary Jaiprakash Chaturvedi said in a letter to all schools affiliated to the CBSE.

The schools will get “adequate time” to comply with the measures including psychometric evaluation of the teachers and other staff. This comes days after the CBSE issued a host of instructions to its schools to ensure the safety of students, seeking them to get a psychometric evaluation of their teachers and others staff done by professional psychologists and submit an action- taken the report in two months.

In a circular last month, the board also asked its schools to get a safety audit of their staff and premises done by the local police in wake of the murder of a seven-year-old student in Ryan International School, in Gurugram.

"Such verification and evaluation for non-teaching staff like bus drivers, conductors, peons and other support staff may be done carefully and in detail. This may be compiled and reported on the CBSE website within two months of receipt of this circular," the board said, threatening with strict action against those failing to comply with the instructions,” it said.

The CBSE has moved into frame “a comprehensive” set of guidelines on safety of school students as it was felt that the existing measures suggested by the board or taken by the schools were not adequate to check crime against children in the school campuses, official sources said.

“The new guidelines would not only seek to ensure proper implementation of all safety measures including those two be proposed but also make the schools more accountable and responsible for matters pertaining to student safety,” they added. The board is framing the safety guidelines in consultation with the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry.