The West Bengal School Education department has decided to incorporate key aspects of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012, and several interactive activities regarding prevention of child sexual abuse in the primary education curriculum of State-run schools.
The move is aimed at increasing awareness among schoolchildren about sexual abuse. The development comes at a time when the alleged sexual assault of a kindergarten student by two teachers at a renowned private school in Kolkata has triggered large-scale outrage in the State.
Officials said they were planning to introduce the changed syllabus from Class I. “Since it is rather difficult to make primary schoolchildren understand the POCSO Act as well as ‘good touch’ and ‘bad touch’ through textbooks, we are planning to come up with interactive ways to make it more lucid,” Avik Majumdar, chairman, Syllabus Restructure Committee, told The Hindu.
He said the road map to the proposed changes would be announced by late December.
The proposal for the new inclusions in syllabus was made at a recent meeting between the members of the Syllabus Restructure Committee and the West Bengal Commission for Protection of Child Rights (WBCPCR). “We are glad that the Education Department is finally going to approve it,” said WBCPCR Chairperson Ananya Chatterjee Chakraborti.