Despite school safety guidelines, children are exposed to danger

Safety of children is every child’s concern and as Bill Clinton once put it, there is nothing more precious to a parent than a child, and nothing more precious to our future than the safety of all our children. In Kenya, school safety has been a concern for more than a decade. In July 2008, the Ministry of Education formulated the Safety Standards Manual (Schools as Safe Zones), but have our schools been safe? This question has been asked in many forums. However, it seems like the people concerned have dragged their feet to ensure that our schools are safe. No wonder, we have heard many avoidable cases that have ended pupils lives and destruction of property worth millions. For instance, you must have heard cases where children have been kidnapped, dormitories being reduced to ashes, pupils collapsing in school with no one capable of administering first aid.

One cannot help but wonder why the education sector has paid such little attention to safety because in other sectors, for example transport, safety is key. For instance, when driving along the highway and a policeman happens to stop you, the main question that will linger in your mind is likely to be, has my insurance policy expired, or do I have a first aid box, fire extinguisher and safety triangle? But ask yourself, when you were in primary or secondary school, how many fire extinguishers did you see along the corridors? Did you ever see a first aid kit in the classes? Were any of you deliberately in disaster preparedness or first aid skills?