Police Verification Of all Schools Staff A Must, Says #CBSE After Gurgaon School Murder

NewDelhi: Schools across the country affiliated to the Central Board of Secondary Education or CBSE will have to get police verification and psychometric evaluation done for all their staff.

 

The order from the central school board came amid nationwide concern about the safety of children in schools following the murder of seven-year-old Pradyuman Thakur at a school in Gurgaon earlier this month. The police say the killer is a conductor of the school bus ? .

 

The Delhi AAP government, too, issued a notice to the capital’s private schools, ordering police verification of all teaching and support staff.

 

“Safety and security of the students must be the paramount concern of the managing committee of all schools,” the notification read.

 

Delhi’s deputy CM Manish Sisodia, who also holds the education portfolio, had told Media that CCTV would be made mandatory for all government and private schools. The schools, he had said, must also provide a monthly report to the police on the functionality of the CCTVs.

 

Six Central ministries are working on a security protocol for schools, Union minister Maneka Gandhi said yesterday. “The secretaries would meet soon to discuss how the schools will implement these guidelines,” said the minister, who had initially roped in Prakash Javadekar, the minister for Human Resources Development.

 

Central minister Ms Menaka Gandhi has suggested several measures, including appointing women drivers for school buses.

 

Gurgaon’s Ryan International School, which opened on Monday — 10 days after Pradyuman’s murder — was shut down by the police again by the evening. The school, which has been indicted for shocking security lapses, will not begin functioning before the issue has been addressed.

 

Parents who came to school yesterday said despite the murder, there has been no upgrade of security at the school. “Security and facilities at Ryan today were no different from the dreadful September 8, nothing has changed since,” said one parent.

 

A 3 member Special Investigation Team had found that the boundary wall of the school was broken, which gave outsiders easy access to the premises. Also, the students were forced to share toilet facilities with school staff, bus drivers and conductors also.