The Union education ministry has drawn up school safety and accountability guidelines based on suggestions of an expert committee and upon the orders of the Supreme Court. The new ‘Guidelines on School Safety and Security’ is meant for all states for implementation across all government and private schools. A list of 11 categories of ‘negligence’ for which school administration would be directly responsible have been prepared. If there is non-compliance of the guidelines then schools would be fined up to 5% of the total revenue in the preceding year if its a private school with bar on fresh admissions. Not only this, there is possibility of derecognition as well in case of non-compliance.
The 11 categories of negligence are based significantly on the learnings from the poor handling of murder of a 7-year-old child in an international school in Gurugram in 2017. There is also a larger focus on ‘holistic’ physical as well as psycho-social safety of students behind the initiative of coming up with the new guidelines. These guidelines are to be notified by states under provisions of the Right to Education Act, 2009 and Juvenile Justice Model Rules, 2016.
