A safety audit report released in August by NIMHANS (National institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences) and Underwriters Laboratories (UL), a not-for-profit safety certification company found that the safety of schools in Bengaluru and Kolar were only half of the expected levels. 131 private, public, aided and unaided schools were assessed and scored on physical infrastructure, road safety, fire safety, and first-aid facilities among other aspects.
Following this, the two are working with the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) to come out with a safety checklist based on the report.“We are finalising the checklist and it will be uploaded on the website for schools to download. They can conduct a self-appraisal or audit to see where they stand when it comes to safety for students. This would involve physical infrastructure, toilets, staircases, playgrounds, fire, electrical safety, etc, The performance of the school will be available on (Student Achievement tracking system) for parents to see,” said K G Jagadeesha, Commissioner for Public Instruction.
Initially, the plan was to conduct a safety audit of all schools in collaboration with the police.“It is not possible to conduct inspections of 70,000 schools specifically with this checklist. It is more practical for schools to do it themselves. It will be done by the end of this academic year and parents will be able to see it to make a decision before enrolling their child in a school for the next academic year. We may also consider ranking based on safety in the future but we do not want it to become a competition, resulting in false entry,” he added.
“As it is not possible to scale up the audit in all schools at one time, the aim of the self-appraisal is to get schools to conduct self-audits. This is a start and is better than a third party doing it. In the future we also intend to conduct a ‘training the trainers’ programme as people need training on how to go about the audit,” said Suresh Sugavanam, managing director of UL.
Lakshmi Nair, programme manager at UL said,” Aspects including roads leading to the school, safety in commute, infrastructure is part of the checklist which is awaiting approval from the government. It is robust and based on scientific data capturing. It is upto them to take it forward now.”
In the report released two months ago, it was found that when it comes to the macro level such as school safety guidelines, school safety committees, budget for schools, safety was only 48 percent of expected levels. Road safety levels were at 20 percent, fire safety at 20 % and first-aid at 40 %.
Of 173 roads observed near 131 schools, several did not have school zone signange, speed limits, supervised lane crossing and designated drop and pick up zones. They were filled with potholes and insufficient footpaths. A school safety budget was not present in 80 % of the schools.
An excerpt of the report reads, “ Several laboratories did not have exhaust fans, chemicals were not labelled properly or kept out of children’s reach. Several schools had not conducted fire safety drills, did not have emergency exits.”
