CISCE to send safety manual to ICSE schools within a week

The Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations will send a safety manual to all affiliated schools by the third week of April, the CISCE has said.

The school safety manual has been designed to ensure that children in schools were provided with a "safe, secure and caring environment", the CISCE said in a statement yesterday.

"We are committed in providing a safe and secure environment to our children," the Chief Executive of the Council, Gerry Arathoon, said.

The manual, in the form of a book, will be ready within a week. Later, it will be posted on the council's website, the statement said.

The school safety manual covers a wide range of topics which the school administration needs to be aware of, it said.

The manual calls for setting up a school safety sub-committee that will involve teachers, students, parents along with the school management "to play important roles in adopting the practice of periodic and repeated safety guidelines", the statement said.

Securing school premises with new technology for the safety of students and allocating a special budget for the same purpose have also been stressed in the manual.

The manual also advocates ensuring psychological and emotional well-being of students by identifying verbal, emotional, sexual, mental or physical abuse by any teacher, classmate, parents, non-teaching staff or anyone else and subsequent redressal through awareness and adequate precaution.

It also advises identification of children with special needs and provision of adequate care and safety.

The manual also recommends feedback mechanism to address issues related to child safety and security.

On issues of gender sensitisation and safety or sexual harassment of women at schools, the manual recommends implementation of existing laws.

The manual comes in the wake of allegations of sexual abuse of primary students in some premier city schools in recent times.