Schools mull child protection measures

An outpouring of allegations of sexual harassment on social media over the past week from each college students and alumni of Chennai colleges has led to establishments taking cognisance of the gravity of the difficulty and placing measures in place to make sure pupil security and sensitise college members.

While assuring mother and father and college students that they’d a zero tolerance coverage in direction of sexual harassment on campus, a city-based college on its web site mentioned college students had been welcome to put in writing to their college principals or counsellors, and strict motion could be taken as per legislation.

The college additionally made obtainable info relating to the structure of a committee on campus ruled by the Prevention of Sexual Harassment at Workplace (POSH) Act.

“In the last week, three schools reached out to have sessions to sensitise male teachers. We have to make it clear that name-calling, body shaming or any inappropriate behaviour either on campus or during online classes is completely unacceptable,” mentioned a marketing consultant, who facilitated periods for colleges.

She mentioned since lessons had utterly gone on-line, all lecturers had been strictly instructed to speak with the scholars solely as a gaggle by sending broadcast messages, and never individually e-mail or message them. Over the following week, one other college mentioned they had been planning to ship out a round to the mother and father about grievance redressal mechanisms in place, and whom both the youngsters or mother and father may contact to boost issues.

“While we have resource material that is distributed to students of all classes, which speaks about identifying and preventing child sexual abuse, children have also been told about the 1098 helpline as well as the POCSO Act,” mentioned the principal of a college within the suburbs.

Schools within the State are additionally presently ready for pointers that the Tamil Nadu authorities promised to launch to watch on-line lessons being carried out in academic establishments as a consequence of COVID-19.

“Once the guidelines are announced, we must implement whatever we practically can. Many institutions thought that online learning would be a short-term solution, but now that it has been over a year, and guidelines addressing issues regarding student safety are important,” mentioned D.C. Elangovan, common secretary, Federation of Private Schools in Tamil Nadu.

G.R. Sridhar, State president, Tamil Nadu Correspondents’ Association of Private Schools, mentioned colleges ought to be certain that mother and father are concerned and conscious of the schedule of on-line lessons that their youngsters are attending. “Schools should insist on parents acknowledging this schedul, so that they know when classes are happening from a safety perspective. We also want the government to consider allowing schools to call a limited number of teachers on campus so that they can take the online classes and use the school’s devices,” he mentioned.