THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Complaint boxes, where students can secretly drop in their vexations or concerns, would be set up in Government schools in the state soon. The boxes are initially being set up in the 3,000 schools where help-desks would be set up in the first phase.
It is in the draft guidelines for setting up help-desks in schools jointly prepared by the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and the Mahila Samakya Society that the concept of complaint boxes have been included. According to the guidelines, the complaint box must be kept somewhere locked, where students can drop in their queries, doubts, issues or problems, which they fear to ask in open.
The complaints must be collected by the Headmaster every evening and answers given.
The guidelines state that the students must not be forced to divulge their identity. Cross-questioning them in the staff room is another strict no-no. Instead, remedies to meet their problems must be taken. If they are personal, then the student may be taken into confidence and problem diagnosed.
The draft guidelines which were prepared after a series of seminars and workshops on the implementation of the help-desk elaborates on the need of school-level, panchayat-level and state-level committees to monitor the working of the helpdesk. The problems identified by the school-level committees, which require external help, would be handed over to the panchayat-level committees.
Though the help-desk is mainly aimed at girls, boys are not being warded off. Even the school-level committee would have a boy as its member if it’s a mixed school.
Realising the fact that students in various places would be acquainted with various levels of problems, the help-desk would set its working priorities. It would not be a place for counselling or problem- solving alone but the focus should also be on the strengthening of the school components as a whole. The role of teachers, intervention of parents, functioning of PTAs and so on.
Among these, one of the main lookout of the programme would be the strengthening of the teacher community.
The guidelines state that since students spent much of their active time with the teachers, they have a major role in the overall development of students. Which means the success of help-desks would indirectly pave way for empowering the teacher community too, it states.
Including personal and online training, teachers would be advocated an attitudinal change before the help-desks come into existence in the schools. The training of teachers would be completed by November 20 and help-desks would come into being in schools soon after.