Safety first

Students in Educational Service Area of Khon Khaen learn how to use fire safety equipment, during a mock evacuation exercise last November. — PHOTOS COURTESY OF CHATCHAY THAIKLA

Young children on board a school bus in Chiang Rai. The seats fail to comply with the safety standard set by the Department of Land Transport, which requires a maximum of 12 seats, with safety belts.

One morning in June, parents of five students in Prachin Buri faced their worst nightmares when a 10-wheeler rammed into the school bus that carried their children to school. The five children died in the crash.

Dropping kids off and picking them up in the afternoon is a daily routine to many parents with school-aged children. No parents could comprehend why their children will not be coming home one day.

The school bus, in this case, was a makeshift songthaew pick-up truck. Some students stood because the school bus was overcrowded, said police captain Paisin Kaewsikow of Kabin Buri police. The accident also seriously injured 15 other students.

This type of accident is not the first or the last one that happens to our kids. Every year, the number of accidents - even deaths - that occur to children remains high, despite the fact that we have an endless number of case studies, similar to the Prachin Buri accident, to learn from. Worse, the cause is mostly recklessness or a lack of any safety measures.

Rather than those involved in such tragedies pointing fingers at each other, or the government, however, the responsibility falls upon everyone. Safety begins at home, and maintaining it requires efforts from everyone in the community.

"Child safety and security in schools is an amendment that we all must help each other push forward," says advisor to the National Safety Council Chatchay Thaikla. "We must think that whatever happens, it might happen to our own kids."

Understanding accidents

In Thailand, the 2003 Child Protection Act touches only broadly on the issue of school safety. The act mainly states, in one of its eight sections, that teachers and parents must not intentionally leave children in harms way or take away their rights to proper care and welfare. This generalisation fails to do enough to prevent or protect children from accidents and injuries.

The Prachin Buri school bus accident, for example, could have been prevented, had everyone adhered strictly to the Department of Transport's safety regulation that requires all school buses to have a maximum of 12 seats and safety belts. In this sense, the Act did very little to protect the children because it failed to punish adults who intentionally put children in harm's way.

In order to prevent or reduce physical injuries to children, it is crucial that everyone understands the causes and prevention of accidents. A study by Ramathibodi Hospital's Child Safety Promotion and Injury Prevention Research Centre finds drowning to be the most common cause of death in children under 14. In 2005, the centre found that drowning killed more than 1,500 children each year, with the highest number of casualties to children between five and nine years old.

The centre also finds road accidents as the second greatest cause of death among this group. Every year, about 270,000 children are injured - and about 800 killed - travelling between their homes and schools. According to Dr Adisak Phalitapolkarnpim, head of the research centre, 85 percent of those killed in road accidents did not wear a crash helmet. Power leakages in electrical appliances, including water coolers, claim the third highest number of deaths.

In an effort to determine the type and frequency of physical injuries that normally occur in schools, Dr Adisak and his research team initiated a safe school project in 2004. With more than 8,000 primary students in five schools in and around Bangkok participating in the project that year, data collected from the study provide a basis for establishing safety regulations or future campaigns on awareness and behavioural changes.

"Teachers are extremely concerned about the students' safety in schools; but rather than taking preventive measures, they tend to take action after an injury or accident already has happened," says safe school project researcher Chadaporn Suksiriwan.

To make a school safe, she adds, requires a more holistic approach, which includes ensuring safety along the route from the students' home to the school, preventing cases of injury or accident by maintaining injury records and risk area surveys, and conducting a risk assessment in classroom activities, so that teachers become aware of possible injuries that may occur as a result of what they teach in class.

Prior to the project, Chadaporn says that the task of maintaining a safe school environment usually lay with either the administration or maintenance section. To change that, the project brings more stakeholders into the school safety circle and forms a safety committee that has both parents, students, and teachers as members.

"When parents get involved, they feel that they are part of what goes on at school. So, when accidents occur, parents won't place the responsibility on the school but will share the responsibility to make schools safe for their children," Chadaporn says.

Part of the safety committee's responsibility is maintaining injury records and survey the school environment for dangerous areas or risky spots that may cause injuries to students. Data collected from these physical environment surveys reveal that most injuries occur within the classroom and science laboratories (37.38 percent), followed by the playground, sports facilities, school yard, or swimming pool (31.19 percent), and stairs and corridors (19.07 percent).

Most of the injuries are caused by self-falls or missteps, followed by injuries caused by physical materials, such as desks or penknives, and the arrangement of the physical environment. Unless injury records are kept and risk areas surveyed, the schools can only guess why accidents and injuries occur. With the data and collaborative efforts from all stakeholders, a quick and simple fix to the physical environment usually helps to prevent future injuries from recurring.

Suanbua School, for example, repaved the students' playground with rubber material, replaced the hinged windows with sliding windows, placed a rubber floor mat under the electric water cooler, and repaved the road surface and sidewalk.

Thainiyomsongkroa School, another school under the project, removed unstable structures from the playground, installed a fence along the pavement in front of the school's gates, replaced damaged drainage cover with new ones, and removed unstable desks and chairs from classrooms.

Prevention, not reaction

Besides preventing physical injuries or accidents, school safety is also about preparation for and response to an emergency. As an advisor to the National Safety Council and director Thai Fire and Rescue Training Academy, Chatchay Thaikla is working with the Ministry of Education in drafting an emergency response manual to be used as a guideline by schools.

"In this world, accidents are often repeated," Chatchay says. "Every year, we have got the same floods and draughts. The [2004] tsunami didn't happen for the first time either. So, the key point here is whether or not we learn to manage these [recurring] events correctly."

To make a school safe, says Chatchay, means that every parent will see their children again at the end of the day, unharmed. Achieving this requires involvement from all parties -the government, school administrators, parents, students, and residents in the community.

"Increasing safety in schools doesn't necessarily mean installing sophisticated safety equipment. Rather, schools should begin with what they already have, and make that better and safer," he says. In kindergarten, for example, safe means no jagged edges to cut little hands or fingers. "Or, a hole in the ground, no matter how tiny it is, we must assume a child could fall into it."

The emergency response manual prepares schools for unforeseen events, such as intrusions, medical emergencies, kidnappings, bomb threats, physical injuries and deaths. In addition, the manual provides emergency guidelines in times of natural disasters, chemical leaks, or electrical outages. By August of this year, Chatchay hopes to distribute this manual and a multimedia CD that demonstrates how to practically carry out the plan to all schools.

Having a preventive, rather than reactive, mindset is probably the most important key to creating a safe environment for children, not only in schools, but also at home and elsewhere. Part of this preventive mindset includes putting up a floor plan to display all emergency exits, creating a list of emergency numbers to call, making a checklist for safe operation of equipment and appliances, staging mock emergency response exercises, and many more. Only when this happens will our children live in a safer environment, where recklessness or ignorance causes no more loss of lives.

For more information on the Safe School Project, contact the Child Safety Promotion and Injury Prevention Research Centre at 02-201-2382.

Making schools safe In creating a safe environment for students, the Safe School Project highlights seven key areas in which a school may improve safety : Area 1: Physical structure of the building / classrooms / walkways Install stanchions in the school's canteen, where students can queue up when purchasing food Place plants at building corners or at sharp turns to reduce injuries. Repave and smooth rough ground surfaces Replace damaged sewer lids Area 2: Stairways, doors, and windows Replace hinged windows on ground floors with sliding windows Replace louvered windows with sliding windows Remove sharp angles on the stairs Install window and door stoppers Install signage on large plate glass windows Repair iron gates and screens Area 3: School desks and chairs Fix unstable or broken chairs and desks Remove extruding nails Area 4: Playground Make sure the structures and materials are stable and meet required safety standards Area 5: Electricity Distribute safety manual on electrical appliances Post a warning sign and proper usage instructions Inspect electrical appliances, outlets, and switches regularly Repair and install new electric wires when needed Area 6: Pools and ponds Make sure ponds are no deeper than 30cm. Area 7: Streets and traffic in front of the school Install metal fences or bars near the pavement to prevent students from falling into the street Paint a zebra crossing lines on the pavement Install fences around the school and restrict motor traffic Assign teachers to watch the traffic and receive students in the morning Prohibit students from buying food outside the school Prohibit students from crossing the street without an adult's supervision