The principal of a posh private school in Bangalore recently said that the security of students is not the management’s responsibility. With more than 37 per cent of our population in primary and secondary schools, is it fine for parents to take lopsided school security arrangements in their strideIJ Frontline institutions, which charge over Rs 50,000 as admission fee alone, have been in the news for shocking security lapse incidents. In the wake of the rape of a six-year-old girl in a Bangalore school and the one in Guwahati wherein the student was raped and hanged, DEEBASHREE MOHANTY tells you why ‘safety first’ should be the chant of every educational facility
My daughter asked me yesterday, ‘has something very bad happened to meIJ Have I been punishedIJ What was bhaiya doingIJ’IJ I have no answers. She is only six years old. She has no idea what rape and assault mean. She knows there is pain, but she doesn’t know that she has been violated. With all the sudden attention and hushed tones around her, my daughter is having withdrawal symptoms. As a father, I cannot do anything much except tell her that all will be well and she can go back to school soon. I want her to forget everything as quickly as she can. Of course, we are never going to forget what our daughter and the family went through
— Father of the six-year-old Class 1 girl in Vibgyor International School in Bangalore who was raped in school. Her father, a senior software techie with a reputed firm, has been taking rounds of the school and the police station ever since he found out that his child had been violated
When five-year-old Diya Sharma arrived five minutes later than her scheduled time at the bus stop, her mother, a gynaecologist, got very worked up. She made frantic calls to the bus attendant but no one answered her calls. Just when she was on the edge of a breakdown, she noticed the familiar yellow and blue bus round the corner. On the way home, the little one explained the delay: “Driver bhaiya met some of his friends at a construction site and asked them to take a ride on our bus. They were very friendly and chatted with me throughout the journey. All of them got down on the next red light. They were 13, no 15 of them,” she told her mother.
Aghast at this worrying information and appalled at the zero security, Shikha confronted this premier international school’s principal with her concerns. “I couldn’t sleep the night and what happened to me in school was even more horrifying. The management was very hostile. From the administration head to the principal, everyone was in denial. They said my daughter had a wild imagination and no such thing had happened. The principal stressed that the school was equipped with the latest technology and any sort of a security lapse on a bus was impossible. When I insisted on looking at the arrangement, we found that the CCTVs in route numbers 1,3,5,6,7,9,11,12,13,14 ,18 and 24 had not been working for a long time. There were no GPS trackers on these routes and there was no monitoring happening at the administration office! So much for promised, highly paid for security,” Shikha Sharma says about her experience with the school, a high-end institution sitting pretty on the Greater Noida Expressway.
When approached by this newspaper, the principal refused a comment on this case. But many mothers like Shikha have been campaigning for better security measures.
The school charges Rs 1 lakh as admission fee for pre-primary sections and Rs 3,000 per month for conveyance. There is an extra charge of Rs 80,000 under the ‘development and technology handling charges’. Most international schools charge between Rs 2,500-4,500 pm for conveyance on an AC bus, depending on the distance. Middle-level schools charge Rs 1,500-2,000 pm.
According to the latest National Crime Records, a child gets sexually assaulted in school every 21 minutes in India. In 2013, more than 13,000 cases were registered against sexual harassment of primary schoolchildren across India. Of these, 8,990 cases were of girls in the 13-15 years’ group. In 2014, there have already been 732 complaints of sexual harassment in schools across the nation.
“The figure is much more than what is projected here. When it comes to minor girls being harassed in school, FIRs are rarely filed. Often, the child feels too scared to reveal the details of the torture and doesn’t confide in parents. In cases when the parents find out about the sexual abuse by school staff, they are too scared to report the matter,” Akash Sehgal, owner of Save A Girl Child, shelter for rape victims in Delhi, says. Sehgal tells you that out of 113 girl children in his hostel, 70 per cent have been sexually abused in school. They are all under the age of 14 years.
He tells you that no longer are these kind of sexual abuses limited to the Government schools in remote towns. “In 2014 itself, there have been three prominent cases reported from Delhi’s private schools which continue to enjoy a good reputation. There were two cases of molestation and blackmail reported from a posh kindergarten school in Mumbai and one incident of an 11-year-old girl being raped by her Geography teacher in a premier school in Kolkata. Then there is the latest Bangalore case of the 6-year-old girl being raped by staff in school. There is not much that has been done about these cases. They have, however, raising one pertinent question — are our children safe in schoolIJ,” Sehgal points out.
Premier schools in Delhi boast of best technology being in place to cover every minute detail of the school and schooling activities but when it comes to safety measures, the result card is zero zilch. Homemaker Ruchi Nanda considers it the gift of God that she was just in the nick of time to save her daughter from trouble. “We zeroed in on the middle-level senior secondary school in Vikaspuri for my eight-year-old girl. She was very happy with the school until the day when she came back crying and was very embarrassed. After a lot of questioning, she told us that there were three bhaiyas peering at the girls from a window while they were changing in their classrooms after the swimming period. The girls had no idea that they had onlookers,” Nanda tells you. Agitated parents marched into the principal’s office to demand an explanation as to why the girls were made to strip and put on fresh clothes in a classroomIJ “We were told that the washroom were under maintenance, hence could not be used. But the girls tell us that they have been changing in the classroom ever since the session began. Why are we inviting spectators to watch our girls naked in school,” Nanda says.
Is this kind of callousness of school authorities pardonableIJ “Any kind of harassment in school should be treated seriously. It is the sole responsibility of the school to offer a safe and enriching environment to children. Apart from security concerns, it is mandatory to hire people with the right credentials. A thorough background check is not enough. A team of experts should scrutinise every bit of paper and antecedent before hiring,” educationist Aarti Chabarria says. She points out that almost 40 per cent of schools in Delhi NCR hire teachers and trainers without even conducting a proper interview, let alone doing a background check. There are no norms or code of conduct followed by schools and institutions wherein the recruited staff members undergo a mandatory background check for child protection. The biggest irony is that elite schools and colleges often run a background check on the credentials of the child and insist on a particular education/economic background of parents but when it comes to having a check done for their own staff they fall short. Most incidents which we come across are highly preventable and all they require is commitment on part of all stakeholders. “A zero tolerance policy against any form of abuse is must. There is a need to institutionalise risk assessment in all spaces and institutions which children access,” she adds.
The Teachers Association Board in India released a statement after the Bangalore rape case saying that sexual harassment of minors within the school is a burning problem which needs to be done fast to curb it.
According to a recent survey by a news channel, 13 premier schools across India are under the scanner in 2013-2014 for rape and molestation charges. “More than 70 per cent of accused are staffers or trainers. Four to five per cent rape charges are against classmates or seniors and 15 per cent by school bus drivers/conductors. Primary school goers are the most vulnerable to molestation. Paedophile cases have, however, declined,” the news channel said on July 24, 2014.
A survey of Bangalore schools by Hyderabad-based NGO Setalvad Children Mission, says PT and extra-curricular teachers are the most prone to such crimes. last month, the child helpline received many shocking complaints of a physical education instructor at a Government school in Kadugodi molesting children. He allegedly made the children sit on his lap, hugged, kissed and touched them inappropriately. More than 15 students confessed to helpline counsellors that they were subjected to molestation. Based on their complaint, the Kadugodi police arrested the instructor under the POCSO Act. A week or two later, he was out on bail.
In India, child protection is addressed through Acts like the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection) Act and the Protection Of Children From Sexual Offences (POSCO) Act whose implementation is under the ambit of the Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD). Under the JJ Act Model Rules 2007 (Rule 31), it is mentioned that it is the responsibility of the State and the Centre to lay down guidelines for prevention of sexual abuse in schools. However, not many States take proactive measures to make child safety a norm. “Despite having stringent laws there are gaps at the implementation level. Also, there is a major delay in the justice process. According to NCRB data, only 15.3 per cent cases of sexual offences against children were completed in 2013 whereas the conviction rate of sexual offences against children is just 31.5 per cent.
“There is an urgent need to take up these cases on a fast track. Schools in India, both public and private, do not have adequate mechanisms to ensure that every child is safe. Poor infrastructure, low quality mid-day meals, unsafe premises and untrustworthy staff contribute in making children unsafe,” Komal Ganotra, Director, Policy, Research & Advocacy, Child Rights and You, tells you.
Whatever the principal of the Bangalore school may say, there is only one truth and that is: The onus of safety of children in their premises lies solely with the school. Other than that, parents require to create a favourable, non-threatening environment at home so that their wards can talk about their fears or any untoward incident that might have occurred.
“There is need for parents to openly talk about safe and unsafe touch as well as sexual advances. Also, it is important to understand a child’s language, verbal and non-verbal behaviour, in order to understand their thoughts and fears. It is essential that the problem is detected as early as possible and rehabilitation done that very moment,” Shivani Dadlani, child counsellor in a popular South Delhi school, says.
The callous business of education
Kestur Vasuki n Bengaluru
Even though the posh Vibgyor International School in Bangalore awaits a reopening pending a PIl hearing in the Karnataka High Court tomorrow, many questions have been raised about the safety of children, especially with the school authorities refusing to take responsibility of the rape of a six-year-old student on its campus.
In this particular incident, the management did not adhere to the Government guidelines, it finally succumbed to pressure by parents and agreed to take some security measures mutually agreed upon by the parents and the management.
The unholy incident shows how education has turned into a purely business venture in the private sector. Vibgyor International, for example, is a high-fee school run by an industrial group with diverse business interests ranging from tourism to other areas. There are around 8-10 branches of this school pan-India and the owner wants to expand the franchise further.
As it turns out, the management did not have any background check done on the over 160 staff members, including culprit Mustafa alias Munna, a skating instructor who was embroiled in similar incidents in a school he worked at previously. The school which collects hefty fees has not installed security cameras to monitor the activities of the premises. The instructor was paid Rs 18,000 per month by the school and the students were charged separately for skating classes.
The Government machinery which is hand-in-glove in running these schools has no checks and balances on their activities. In fact, a look at the ownership pattern indicates how most schools are either run by politicians, businessman or influential people as part profit-making ventures. There are over 100 such elite schools in Bangalore.
According to Vasudeva Sharma, executive director of Child Rights Trust and State convener of the Karnataka Child Rights Observatory, the law machinery has failed to maintain a record of criminals, paedophiles and sex offenders. He adds, this information has to be shared with the schools to take precautionary measures. The Bangalore incident also brought into focus a lack of awareness on laws protecting children. Many experts feel that sensitising staff members on issues related to the safety of children and linkages with Government enforcement agencies would help minimise such brutal attacks on hapless children.
Though the Vibgyor International management initially refused to take responsibility of the incident on its campus, a recent meeting between parents, Government and the school authorities made it see reason. The management finally agreed to do background checks on all its 160 staffers, including the principal, teachers, contract and subcontract workers. The school also agreed to monitor the movement of the children in the school. Maids will now escort children to restrooms, buses, classes, cafeteria and to other parts of the school. The institution agreed to install CCTV cameras in common areas like classrooms, the spa block and the play area.
The Bangalore incident has compelled the Government to come out with a set of guidelines, including installation of CCTV cameras and regular visits by police officers to schools. But these are just half-measures. The cops need to set up a paedophile tracking system which contains details of abusers and cases. Though there has been a 200 percent increase in child sexual abuse cases over the past two years, the police doesn’t have any records of sexual offenders in the city or a system to track them down.