Article Source: Telegraph

Date of Issue: November 13, 2007

Author: Charu Sudan Kasturi

Title of the article: School safety roadmap

India's apex child rights body will involve parents, teachers and even village panchayats in tackling corporal punishment in schools under a new roadmap to eliminate a scourge that refuses to die.

The move comes as India celebrates another Children's Day amid increasing reports of violence against children at school despite a Supreme Court ban on corporal punishment.

It signals the first attempt by the central government to look beyond conventional methods of advocacy and campaigning to eradicate the menace.

The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights roadmap will also include a set of guidelines that the body hopes would help state governments and police enforce the ban.

"Corporal punishment continues because we do not have a mechanism to check the crime," child rights panel chairperson Shantha Sinha said.

The panel has set up a working group that includes officials of the human resource development ministry.

The group will examine in detail the problem of corporal punishment in different states, Sinha said. It will submit its final report on January 31, after which the panel will issue guidelines to education secretaries at the Centre and the states, sources said.

Parent-teacher associations of schools in cities and panchayats in villages will be tapped for assistance. "A sub-committee of the working group is examining the involvement of these associations and panchayats," a source said.

A report on child abuse by the ministry of women and child development earlier this year said two of every three children in India were victims of corporal punishment.

Ajay Kumar, 14, collapsed in his Delhi school on October 23 after being beaten up by a teacher for scribbling in a textbook.

Barely a week earlier, an Ahmedabad boy died after his teacher made him run around the school ground in the blazing sun as punishment for coming late.

A three-year old girl in Kerala was made to drink her urine by a teacher who said she was trying to train the child not to wet her bed.