School safety is the most important prerequisite in the schooling system. One cannot expect an effective teaching-learning process unless there is a safe, secure and congenial learning environment. A child’s education can be forgone if it is at the cost of his/her socio-emotional, and physical well-being. As stated by Maslow in his hierarchy of needs safety needs come next to physiological needs that include food, clothes and shelter. It means that the safety of life if ensured, can be the basis of meeting other higher-order needs. School safety is not a matter of concern for teachers only, it is the collective responsibility of all the stakeholders including parents, administration, and community members, to ensure a safe and non-threatening school environment.
Department of School Education Kashmir last month held a capacity-building training programme of teachers on School safety across all the districts of Kashmir Division. This author, as a Resource Person from one of the Districts realised that school safety should inevitably be made the part of teacher training programmes as the same equips teachers with knowledge about and skills for ensuring the safety of the children and all the stakeholders.
NEP-2020 suggests “A good educational institution is one in which each student feels welcomed and cared for, where a safe and stimulating learning environment exists, where a wide range of learning experiences are offered, and where good physical infrastructure and appropriate resources conducive to learning are available to all students. Attaining these qualities must be the goal of every educational institution.”
National Disaster Management Authority of India in its document National School Safety Progrramme (NSSP) says “School Safety” is the creation of safe environments for children, starting from their homes to their schools and back’’. It includes the safety of Children from large-scale natural hazards of geological/climatic origin, human-made risks, pandemic violence as well as more frequent and smaller-scale fires, transportation and other emergencies, and environmental threats that can adversely affect the lives of children.
The common physical safety issues that schools should take care of include safe and secure buildings, playgrounds, non-structural elements, toilets, hand washing points, drinking water, Mid Day Meals, kitchen, fencing, etc. to ascertain there is no threat to the lives of students from all these elements the school authorities should intermittently go for school safety audit. In the audit all the possible hazards that can cause damage need to be identified, vulnerability assessed, and capacities to avoid/reduce the intensity of damage and risks should be thoroughly taken into consideration.
Taking into account the location of the school management needs to identify the possible hazards that can be threats to life and property such as landslides, floods, fire, earthquake, road accidents, wild animals, etc. To ensure risk reduction the management should accordingly conduct appropriate mock drills, establish an alert mechanism, provide awareness about the disasters, discuss evacuation plans, establish School Disaster Management Plan (SMDP) and periodically conduct safety audits. With regards to physical safety, safeguarding measures that include putting in place all those things which prevent any kind of harm to occur should be prioritized. Under these measures, repair of damaged infrastructure, retrofitting, arranging fire extinguishers, first aid boxes, etc can be a few of the tasks.
Psychosocial safety is another dimension of a Safe School environment. NEP says that a good educational institution is one where each student feels welcomed and cared for. The school authorities need to ensure a stimulating and conducive environment for learning to take place. There should be a non-threatening environment characterized by the absence of all kinds of harassment. Physical, Social or Verbal harassment of a child does not affect his/her studies only but also has serious repercussions on personality development. Ensuring the psychosocial safety of a child thus needs to be given due priority by all the concerned. To this end, the school management should guarantee love and respect for everyone, exhibit a caring attitude, leave no field for alienation/marginalization and ensure an unprejudiced and unbiased environment. Corporal punishment in the form of hitting on the knuckles, running on the school ground, kneeling down for hours, standing up for long hours, sitting like a chair, beating with a scale/rod, pinching and slapping, torture, locking up children alone in classrooms, physical and mental injury, etc. as banned in RTE-2009, demoralizes, disinterests and degrades a student, besides causing least or no change in negative behaviour. School authorities should leave no field for corporal punishment; instead, take recourse to different kinds of reinforcements.
Making students aware of the cyber risks and abuses and cyber safety, too, is the need of the hour because children are more vulnerable to online abuses and threats. The responsibility of saving children from falling prey to cyber crimes more particularly lies on teachers, for they can sensitize the students regarding online abuses and safety measures thereof. Regarding this safety counseling and orientation programmes should be organised besides making it as a practice to talk about being safe online.
School safety programme serves a double purpose as it one hand strives for the safety of the children and on the other hand helps in carrying the message about safety measures/precautions to society. Students seldom discuss the content knowledge with their family members but they definitely repeat at home any of the precautionary measures that they learn at school regarding the safety of life and property.

The author can be reached at [email protected]

Irshad Ahmad Wani