Tuesday, August 31, 2010
DOZENS of primary schools are still not teaching children self-protection skills that could help them to avoid abuse situations, despite Government plans to make the programme mandatory.
As almost 3,300 primary schools reopen this week, children’s charity Barnardos said there is no reason why Stay Safe should still be an optional programme for primary schools.
The Department of Education said a survey which 80% of primary schools responded to showed that, while 92% of schools use Stay Safe, 123 were not teaching it last year. Although 76 of these were using an alternative child protection course, the figures suggest around 60 primary schools nationally offer no such classes for their pupils.
Stay Safe is used in the social, personal and health education (SPHE) curriculum to teach children to recognise an unsafe situation and tell an adult about it. They also learn how to respond to unwanted touching and to know it is all right to say "no" if asked to do something wrong or dangerous.
The 2007 Programme for Government stated all primary schools would be required to implement the Stay Safe programme, but it is not mentioned in last October’s revised coalition deal between Fianna Fáil and the Greens. Last January, then education minister Batt O’Keeffe said he intended to have the programme made mandatory for all schools as part of a review of child protection guidelines. Those discussions are still ongoing and a spokesperson for the current minister, Mary Coughlan, repeated the intention that it would be made obligatory for schools.
But Barnardos chief executive Fergus Finlay said there was no excuse for any schools not to be offering the Stay Safe programme and the Department of Education could send them all letters in the morning making it mandatory.
"Unless schools are instructed to teach this to their pupils, the Government is simply paying lip service to their commitment that everything possible is being done to keep children safe," he said.
The last national data previously available was from 2006, when almost 700 schools were not offering the programme.
A spokesperson for the Child Abuse Prevention Programme, which trains teachers in delivery of Stay Safe, said most schools have now had professional development courses.
"Many schools might previously have been teaching Stay Safe, but may have stopped for one reason or another. But at this stage, we have given training to staff from the vast majority of schools that were not using it in 2006," he said.
Previous education minister Mary Hanafin said in 2006 that it might be made mandatory if its uptake could not be increased by removing barriers to its use.
© Examiner Publications (Cork) Limited, City Quarter, Lapps Quay, Cork. Registered in Ireland: 73385.