A simple question – ‘How was your day at school?’ – usually gets a lengthy reply as your
child explains what they did for the whole day – their interactions with their teachers, classmates, helpers
and even the driver and conductor of their school bus. Despite being a daily practice, it is important
for parents to pay keen interest to this narration, every day for the parents’ responsibility towards the
safety of their child extends to when they are in school. With the
recent sexual assault and murder of a 7-year-old child in Gurugram’s
Ryan International School, parents in Goa too have started reassessing the safety of their children.
Robert D’Mello from Pirna is a very protective father to
Myron and Rachel. While Myron is a student of St Britto’s High School, Mapusa,
Rachel is studying at St Ann’s, Tivim – both at quite a distance from the village. The news of the
gruesome murder came as a shock for the D’Mello family as it fuelled questions about the safety of children in school.
“As a parent, the safety of my children greatly
worries me, even when they are at school. We
do advise them about
not talking to strangers and telling them to stay in groups even in school, but there is a lot more
than is lacking in schools. I always ask the children about how their day was. Nowadays, it’s not safe anywhere. There are
certain days when parents are allowed to meet teachers and we make sure we
attend these meetings,” says Robert, who calls up the driver in case he is delayed in picking up or dropping the children. He has
also saved the contact details of the school and the parents of a few
classmates of his children to be well informed.
He further adds, “It should be compulsory for school
management to keep a security guard at the gate and even some guidance should
be given to the children by experts on safety measures. They should install
CCTV cameras at the main locations of the school for better vigilance.”
Shiba Rodrigues from Vasco is the mother of primary students
Riya and Ryan, who are
studying at St Andrew’s Institute, Vasco. It was the Vasco Rape case, where a minor girl was sexually abused inside the school toilet
in January 2013, that caught
her attention. From then on, she knew that the safety of her children is not to be
taken for granted. “I drop and pick my children from school and I have warned them to stay
clear of any strangers who offer them anything or try to talk to them. Sometimes, if I am
late to pick them from school, I send my sister to pick them; even then, my daughter will call me to
make sure that I know my sister is there,” says Shiba.
“The school is very safe and there are watchmen at both the
gates of the school. Within the school also, there are female helpers to
accompany the children to the toilet and besides the students, no one else is allowed to use these
toilets. I am an active member of the Parent Teacher Association and it is important for me to know about
my children’s teachers and the happenings of the day in school. One good
thing about the school is that the children are not allowed to go out, even after school, unless a parent comes to
pick them. Even if they are not feeling well, the parent is informed and they
are asked to pick the child
up,” she adds.
Ranjana Pandit has three of her daughters studying at Santa
Cruz High School, St Cruz,
with the youngest,
Kanchan, in Std VIII.
She has full confidence in the safety of the school and with two of her children having passed out
from the same school, she has already built a rapport with the teachers. “They use the school bus and I have
the driver’s details. He has been driving the bus for years and even my eldest
son has travelled in the same school bus. The teachers and headmaster of the
school are very protective of the students and if I don’t send my daughter to
school for three days, they call me to ask if everything is fine. These are the
same teachers that have taught all my children, and over the years, I have bonded with
them. I trust the school to take
all the safety measures,
but even then, as a parent, I
worry about my child’s safety in and out of school,” concludes Ranjana.
