It is usually a great relief, when schools resume sessions. Parents are always eager to send their children back to school after a month or so break from long holiday breaks. This relief comes from the presumption that children are more safe in school as opposed to their homes. At home they are vulnerable to bad company that could lead to drug abuse, early pregnancies and too much exposure to Tv and internet which corrode their morals. Other parents go as far to suggest that it’s less expensive to keep them in school because household expenditure especially on food is relatively low.
But recent tragic events in our schools have deemed them as death traps. Last year a two storey classroom building tumbled killing eight and injuring more than 60 others. Just last month (January) a boy was shoot in the head while playing in the ‘safe’ confinement of their school compound. Another one in Kwale County died after receiving a beating from her teacher. And the most recent and bizarre tragedy took place in Kakamega where fourteen pupils and more than 40 others were injured following a stampede when they were leaving for home. What makes this case bizarre is that the official cause of the stampede is yet to be established yet so many young lives were lost.
These are just a few incidences that happened within a very short time period that would make any parent wonder if their child is just a school away from becoming a death statistic. There are no formal statistics to show the number of death incidence while in school but between 2019 and 2020 so far we can put the figure at 25, but the numbers are more.
While parents wallow in their worries, and despite growing incidences on tragic events, the government continues to reassure both parents and students that schools are safe grounds and after each incident investigations have been launched to determine the cause of the tragic events.
Even without looking at the findings of the reports, it’s obvious that most structures in schools and especially classrooms have not been built using the required building standards, in other cases children are susceptible to fatal injury either as a result of some teachers using excessive force as a disciplinary measure or unforeseen accidents.
These events beg answers to our individual responsibility to ensure safety in school. So we will start by looking at primary care givers. Guardian roles stretched beyond their homes to school. For this reason, we cannot stress enough about vigilance in inspecting our children’s learning environment. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it’s definitely a duck. And so it is in the best of our interest to insist on being part and parcel of both huge and small milestones in your child’s school. This way you be able to identify faults and cracks especially in serious projects like building of classrooms. Besides leave a mark in these classrooms, ensure nothing less but utmost professionalism from the contractors, to the materials to the quality of work, and this can only happen when we are vigilant as well as part and parcel of our children’s school activities. This means we should also not fail to report to relevant authorities where quality is compromised.
Right now, corruption has mopped up billions of public funds. So, every government institution is hard up on cash, no wonder school are underfunded. While we are all doing our part in to curb this vice, communities should take responsibilities of fund-raising for the schools in their communities. I know times have changed, but I remember during my schooling days, we were asked to bring cow dung to carpet our classroom floors. It worked then and slowly we grew into small fund raising to build classrooms and some of these are still being used to date. Without putting too much burden on parents, if we want to take pride in our school we must invest in its resources. Surely if we can sacrifice to build really nice churches and homes we cannot fail to think of our schools. For if we wait for funding from a crippled government, we end up crippling our future generation.
But we cannot realize the gains of our fundraising efforts if we are corrupt. Unfortunately, integrity has become expensive, that we are quick to put our interest first before safety. Here we put the weight on the school administration, because they have a direct influence on school resources. Would you rather enjoy blood money than protect the innocent souls entrusted under your care? I believe the former has better rewards both on our conscious, community economic which translates to personal development. Integrity is a personal choice, but whatever your choice remember it has a ripple effect that bounces back.
Lastly remember them in your prayers, because it’s the only protective mesh we can engulf them in when it comes to unavoidable accidents.
There is a famous saying that goes the average person spends a third of his/her life at work, remember the same or even more hours are replicated in our children’s life. Their safety at school is therefore paramount. So the words for the day is to mobilize, remain vigilant, invest, integrity, and prayer to keep our schools safe.