Government issues safety checklist for Delhi schools

The Delhi government has asked all city schools to form a "School Safety Committee" and also issued a 117-point "check list for school safety" on matters including entry of visitors, school toilets and CCTV cameras.

"The school boundary wall is intact and is secured with a fence or grill on top and under CCTV surveillance all the time," one of the points in the checklist reads.

The circular, issued by the Directorate of Education (DoE) on November 7, states that the duly filled out checklist must be made available to parents who want to see it and they should be informed about it at the time of parent-teacher meetings.

Schools have been directed to form a "School Safety Committee" within 15 days of issuing the circular.

The "School Safety Committee" should be made of the Head of School, four students, four parents from School Management Committee and Parent-Teacher Association, one senior teacher, one primary teacher and one non-teaching staff.

The Committee must undertake a "Monthly Safety Walk" of the school premises on a fixed day every month in order to ensure compliance of the safety checklist, the circular said.

Points in the safety checklist ask that all staff entering the school have ID Cards, staff identification is checked at the entrance, and that firewall, filtering and monitoring mechanisms are installed in all computers in the school premises.

The safety checklist on toilets include that all toilets for primary classes have women staff for cleaning or maintenance and no male staff is deployed there and that for students of Classes 3 to 5, toilet visits are allowed only in groups of 2 (buddy system)".

On empty rooms, the checklist asks whether all empty rooms or abandoned or secluded areas of the school including the terraces are under CCTV surveillance and asks to make sure that empty rooms and terrace areas are always securely locked and all locked rooms are opened and checked every 15 days.

On staff, the checklist asks to ensure the schools have processed police verification of all staff and wherever possible, a home visit to new support staff has been done by a senior staff member for verification.

General Secretary of Government School Teachers Association Delhi, Ajay Veer Yadav, told IANS that the implementation was tardy.

"Hardly 10 per cent of the government schools have formed the School Safety Committee," he said.

Yadav said that there should be more security guards in each school and added that CCTV cameras should be properly maintained by the government as the majority were not functioning.

--IANS

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