While the recent spate of incidents in which children’s safety and well-being were severely compromised by adults, especially the two incidents in Kalutara, have opened the eyes of many, Sri Lanka is seeking answers to several serious questions in this regard. While there is a concern as to how the offenders of these incidents should be penalised, the biggest question is what the country is willing to do to prevent the recurrence of similar incidents in the future.
The latest tragedy that reminded the authorities and the public that children’s safety cannot be guaranteed even at educational institutions, is the case where a Kalutara based private tuition teacher was arrested for allegedly abusing, including sexually, around 16 underage girls who attended his classes. It was a wake-up call for many parents who leave children unmonitored at educational institutions because of the belief that children are always safe when they are with a teacher, and has now led to a national level discourse on the importance of keeping private tuition classes under surveillance to ensure children’s safety.
As The Daily Morning reported this week, the Government has paid attention to preparing a set of guidelines and recommendations with the aim of regularising the quality of education provided by private tuition classes and to ensure the safety of the students that attend those classes. However, despite the necessity of and demand for regulations concerning private tuition classes, State Minister of Education, A. Aravindh Kumar, pointed out a crucial reality. That is, the limitations of regulating the private education sector, regarding which he said that it would be impossible to make significant reforms as the Government cannot have full control over the private education sector, as it is a private one.
The limitations pertaining to what the Government can do, is indicative of the reality that the Government alone cannot improve children’s safety and well-being in the said context. Therefore, this endeavour should receive the parents’ contribution as well.
Unlike before, the time has come for the parents to come to terms with the truth that although teachers, both private and public sector ones, are providing an essential and dignified service, they are ordinary human beings, and that therefore, they should not be trusted or relied on blindly. Parents should stop the tradition of viewing them as a completely trustworthy group, and guide the children to do the same. Private tutors are service providers, and as clients that pay their wages directly or indirectly, parents and children should have the right to question the services that they receive, and this idea should receive more prominence in Sri Lankan society.
Private tutors’ performance and behaviour should be monitored and assessed, and this is largely the responsibility of parents. While parents should directly monitor the activities and behaviour of private tutors, especially those that visit students’ houses, they should strongly guide children to report any suspicious activity by such tutors and to raise their voice in the absence of adults or authorities. That is not enough. For children to understand rights related violations or simply improper behaviours of private tutors, parents should teach children what the latter’s rights are and the ways in which they can get violated. At the same time, every child that gets left with a tutor should have a way of contacting their parents or an authority in the event of an emergency, and ensuring that is also the parents’ responsibility.
However, there are regulations that could support this necessary change. Stipulating the time within which private tuition classes could be held, setting boundaries with regard to the manner in which a private tutor deals with children, introducing a special helpline or a complaint mechanism to assist children in the event of an emergency, and most importantly, having in place a mechanism or a professional body to review private tutors’ performance, could definitely be useful.
To support this system change, the school and social systems should stop assigning teachers an unjustifiable and unquestionable value anymore. Teachers are human beings that make mistakes and sometimes succumb to harmful feelings like any other. Instead of portraying teachers as professionals that are superior and more respectable than other professionals, children should be taught that while giving teachers the due respect, it is not wrong to question a teacher’ behaviour when there is an issue with it. More importantly, children should have the strength to question when a teacher treats them in an unfair manner, and as long as we portray teachers as a group that is always right, children will not have the courage to do that.