On the morning of December 19, 2016, a Class V student of a South Delhi Municipal Corporation primary school in west Delhi entered her classroom, put down her bag, removed the uniform she was wearing to reveal a layer of clothes underneath and simply walked out of the school.
The class teacher discovered this while taking the morning attendance of students but the school approached the police at about 3 p.m. as per a report of the school inspector. According to the complaint filed by the school’s principal at the Khyala Police Station, the child had told a classmate that she was going to an aunt’s house. While she remained missing all day, her family was distressed and the police were on their toes.
After having been missing for almost a day, she was found late at night by the police near India Gate, roaming around seemingly unharmed. Her parents told the school inspector the next day that she had left on her own and had been angry at her mother. The school inspector asked the principal, class teacher and the security guard of the school to explain their “negligence”. As per the December 20 letter, they were given two days to respond.
Guidelines for schools
Almost a month later, on January 17, SDMC Commissioner Puneet Kumar Goel issued a general guideline to school principals to ensure the safety of students. While the guideline focused on making school infrastructure safe, it did include instructions to principals to make “gate registers for visitors” and to ensure that no students were left on the premises after working hours.
Opposition takes up issue
“It should also be ensured that on the gates, duty at the time of recess and dispersal of students be assigned to teachers,” said the guideline. However, the incident and its aftermath don’t seem to have changed much when it comes to the primary schools of the SDMC. Farhad Suri, the Leader of the Opposition in the SDMC, on Tuesday highlighted the issue during a meeting of the House, saying that the infrastructure of schools left a lot to be desired.
“This incident once again shows that the promises of deployment of female security staff and CCTV cameras have not been fulfilled. It shows the general apathy of the staff,” said Mr. Suri. The Leader of the House, Subhash Arya, dismissed the claims saying that though there were certain flaws, the education services provided by the SDMC had improved.
“It’s not right for us to comment on the girl and this one incident. Yes, learning outcomes need to improve, but to say that our schools are bad is incorrect,” said Mr. Arya.
