EDITORIAL | School guidelines right step

The Karnataka government’s guidelines to educational institutions are a welcome effort at making schools safe for children. The guidelines cover a wide range of areas and have come in response to several problems relating to children’s safety that have come to the fore repeatedly in recent years. Responding to growing instances of sexual abuse and assault of school children, the government has made it mandatory for school authorities to provide children with awareness of the insidious nature of sexual violence and help them differentiate between good and bad touch. Schoolchildren will also be made aware of the steps they should take if subjected to sexual violence. The government guidelines also seek to improve safety of children on their way to school and back home. A woman member of the school staff is required to be on the bus till the last child has been dropped home. This is to ensure that children are not left alone with bus drivers and other attendants. Speed limits have been imposed on school buses, too. School authorities are required to put in place speed bumps to reduce speeding inside school premises. The guidelines also make it mandatory for buses to carry first-aid equipment on board. Schools are also required to maintain a record of health issues, blood groups and allergies of all their students. This will come in handy in the event of medical emergencies.

The guidelines to schools also cover physical infrastructure. In a long-overdue step, the issue of overcrowding of schools is addressed. The guidelines make it mandatory for schools to provide 1 square metre of space per child. Running a school is a lucrative business and people are opening schools just about anywhere, even in make-shift sheds and basements of buildings. Besides, too many children are admitted, and such overcrowding ends up denying children with space to play and run around. By mandating the floor space area per child, the government is seeking to address the problem of overcrowding. However, this applies only to those schools that have been established since 2017-18 and after. Older schools have been let off the hook. The government should require these schools, too, to adhere to the guidelines, perhaps in a phased manner.

Parents send their children to school with the expectation that they will be safe there. A string of unsavoury incidents, including sexual abuse of children and accidents involving school buses, have revealed that that’s not the case. The guidelines are a step towards addressing these issues. The government must ensure their implementation. Parents need to work with school authorities to ensure that children are indeed safe at school.