Police officials attached to the Crime against Women and Children division received 30-odd complaints against schoolteachers in TN since last week. Of these, 15 originated from Chennai. Taking cognizance of this, the TN Commission for Protection of Child Rights said it has issued six notices to the management of the schools in question. The representatives of the schools are to depose before the Committee and offer explanations on cases reported by the students. While the swift action taken by the officials are encouraging, the recent developments point to a skewed balance of power – between students and their teachers and institutions.

In a majority of the cases reported over the last month, a common thread is that the primary complainants are former students of the institution, while those corroborating such claims are the present-day students. This points to a cycle of abuse that has gone unreported by students for years together, due to the fear of retribution, from teachers or the school administrators itself, in the event of lodging a complaint during their years in school.

One could hold our dysfunctional educational system accountable for such inequities. For the average student and parents, the idea of securing admission into a reputed school itself is one of the paramount worries. The school and its teachers stop being service providers and become a sort of larger-than-life presence that can bring most parents down to their knees. Even when instances of bullying or name-calling take place among children, students settle matters within themselves, and occasionally involve the parents as suspension or rustication could derail a student’s future. To top it off, parents are aware of the difficulty of transferring students from one school to the other – a torturous process that could even result in the loss of precious academic years. And what it boils down to for the students, who may be experiencing abuse at the hand of an educator – an idea that there’s no way out. That one has to endure the situation for as long as you can, and only when one is out of the institution, do they have the courage to share their story. Unfortunately, what this does is only prolong the abuse. While hesitation on behalf of students or parents is understandable, how do schools justify instances where victims have pointed out that complaints were ignored by management for several years?

The Tamil Nadu Commission for Protection of Child Rights also pointed out most schools in TN have not set up child protection and monitoring units or cells that involve children, parents, panchayats and municipal councils. Even in the instances where such units existed on paper, there was no maintaining of records pertaining to children requiring care and protection, or even reports of child abuse cases made to the police.

One thing that has become clear from the spate of incidents in TN – we must empower students to be able to report instances of abuse while they are still with the institution, and not after they have graduated. To ensure that such communication channels are opened up in schools, a clearly defined structure of grievance redressal mechanism must be created and should be overseen by an ombudsman. Encouragingly, the State had recently issued an order for the constitution of two more Child Welfare Committees (CWC) in addition to the existing one. The TN Education Minister has also said that a separate committee is being constituted to handle student complaints. We cannot afford reactionary deterrence when it comes to sexual harassment. We must address gaps in our education system and familial engagement with youngsters on matters of predatory behaviour on a war footing through awareness initiatives that involves all parties.