Protecting schools: ‘Ensuring security is govt’s responsibility’

Security measures schools have been directed to take are beyond their means, teachers say.

LAHORE: In the wake of a terror attack at the Army Public School in Peshawar on Tuesday, the School Education Department has issued a detailed list of security measures that public and private schools must take to ensure the safety of their students.  

However, several private schools and teachers’ associations have expressed concerns over the implementation and efficacy of the suggested security measures.

Chief Minister’s Monitoring Force for the SED issued a detailed list of security measures to all Education executive district officers in the Punjab on the day of the attack. It suggests sensitisation of heads of schools, strict monitoring of security arrangements, the use of barbed wire, hiring security guards and installing surveillance cameras at schools among others measures. They are a part of the security strategy compiled by the SED.

The notification asks public schools, those that have boundary walls as well as those that don’t, to use barbed wire around the boundaries.

It directs schools to ensure that they use one only gate for exit and entry. All other gates will be locked permanently. The notification says that the gate in use will stay shut, even during recess, and will only open when the school closes for the day.

Heads of schools will have to ensure that drinking water stored in tanks and coolers is not contaminated. The heads will have to appoint a responsible teacher to ensure that all tanks and coolers were properly locked.

The SED has demanded that security guards remain present at the main entrance at all times. Schools without security guards have been instructed to hire guards through school councils, after thorough screening. Public schools with IT labs have been asked to install surveillance cameras at the main gate. They will be monitored at the schools’ laboratories.

EDOs have been asked to meet with heads of all schools to sensitise them with regard to security measures and to ensure their implementation.

Reactions to security measures

All Pakistan Private Schools Management Association president Adeeb Jawedani said that it was very hard for most private schools to provide security along the guidelines issued by the department. He said most schools already had security guards and those that didn’t would try to hire some. All schools had been told to beef up security at the entrance of schools. However, he had doubts over the efficacy of the measures.

“How can one security guard stop terrorists from entering a school?” he said. “This is beyond us. It is the government’s responsibility to provide us security.”

Representatives of teachers’ unions had similar reservations. They said the government needed to accept responsibility of providing security to schools across the Punjab.

Punjab Teachers’ Union secretary general Rana Liaquat Ali said gunmen provided by the department did not have the capability of defending and securing schools from terror attacks.

He said only high schools and elementary schools had been given gunmen by the department. Not primary schools.

“These threats are not something a gunman or guard can tackle on his own,” he said. As for the security situation of schools in rural areas, he said, they were at a greater risk. “Especially since so many of them do not have boundary walls.”

The Education Department has instructed schools to use funds from the Farogh-i-Taleem fund or their own non-salary budget. Ali said the FT Fund was insufficient to bear the cost of the security measures they had been instructed to take.

He said the fund wasn’t enough to cover even the cost of repairs and supplies of schools.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 19^th, 2014.