Strictures on school excursions

Centre directs schools to seek written permission from parents or guardians before taking children on study tours or picnics, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Jan 26, 2008 2:27 AM IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Schools should seek written permission from parents or guardians before taking children on study tours or picnics, according to a circular issued by the Centre. The circular containing other guidelines for such outings, issued by the Human Resource Development ministry, follows findings that schools rarely adopt safety measures on tours and picnics.

“We have issued a circular to all state governments asking them to tell the schools to follow the guidelines,” Subash Kuntia, the ministry’s joint secretary, said. “We’ve found and received representations that schools don’t observe safety norms for such tours.”

The guidelines also say that schools can take students only to “non-dangerous” places.

There have been several incidents of schoolchildren dying or getting injured on picnics or study tours. Recently, a group of children from a government school in Himachal Pradesh died in an accident in Tamil Nadu. They were travelling in an over-crowded bus with very few school staff, a ministry official said.

The guidelines also say that the teachers accompanying the students should ensure that the children don’t venture out dangerously. “Going very close to the coast should not be allowed,” a ministry official said.

The ministry wants that parents should be clearly briefed by the school about the tour itinerary and the safety precautions.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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