Safe schools? You must be kidding!

Mirror’s test drive at a few schools to check their security measures throws up disappointing results.

The most unfortunate finding -it is quite easy to get past most gates and gain access to children

When you wave a happy bye to your child in the morning as she enters the school bus, all you want himher to do is take down notes properly, participate in class activities and eat what has been packed off in the lunch box. Safety is something you as a parent have taken for granted. Sadly, though, safety is not a priority for schools.The murder of seven-year-old Pradyuman Thakur at Ryan International School in Gurgaon and the rape of an eight-year-old student on Shahpur Municipal School campus in Ahmedabad last TEST month should have ideally shocked city schools enough to at least ensure basic security measures on their campus. Unfortunately, no.

Mirror’s test drive at 12 schools in the city yielded disappointing results -NONE of them adhered to all the measures mentioned in the circular issued by the city police commissioner.

The top cop’s circular listed out various measures.

Many of these could be easily complied with; for instance, maintaining a visitor’s register with contact details and time of visit, a visitor’s slip to be signed by the concerned authority, putting up posters of self-awareness and selfdefence on the school’s notice board, formation of a committee of female teachers, displaying contact details of members of parents’ committee, school principal, women helpline number and police control room number. Unfortunately, even these measures seemed to be too much to put in place.

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