More needed to ward off threats to security in schools

Security in Chinese schools and campuses will continue to face challenges following a sharp rise in the number of violent crimes against students in the country, the Ministry of Education (MOE) says.

"The crime situation in schools and kindergartens will be closely linked to the impact of social contradictions amid social and economic changes in the next 10 years," says Yu Weiyue, the director of the school management division of the basic education department under the MOE.

On March 23, a man stabbed eight children to death in front of a primary school in Nanping, Fujian province. The attack sparked similar cases across the country.

At least seven children and two adults were also stabbed to death in a village kindergarten on May 12 in Nanzheng of Shaanxi province. The 48-year-old local farmer behind the attack injured another 11 children in the attack.

In another case, a 47-year-old man used a cleaver to attack 29 children and three teachers in a kindergarten in Taixing, in eastern Jiangsu province.

Yu provided profiles of the suspects in the attacks. They were male, between 40 and 50 years old, had bad tempers and were extremist, eccentric, asocial and stubborn.

"In these campus violence cases, most of the victims were junior students who were weak in self-defense. Most of the attacks occurred when students were entering or leaving campus, or when campus security personnel were changing their shifts," he says.

The ministry has required all schools to prevent illegal personnel from entering the schools, and by enhancing their security facilities and reinforcing guards. "We had five important videos or telephone meetings on campus security and issued six notices, of which four were urgent notices, in last year," he says.

The ministry also organized month-long training programs in June and July last year on campus security for 483,000 educators nationwide.

These included county- and district-level officials in education departments, headmasters in primary schools and middle schools, and teachers in training institutions.

A total of 18,000 teachers also received security management training between November and December last year, the MOE said.

"Education and training for schoolchildren are also important," Yu says.

Natural disasters like earthquake or landslides also posed significant danger to Chinese schoolchildren in recent years. To help deal with these challenges, the ministry launched a pre-warning mechanism to alert schools to these dangers, he says.

The number of students who died or were injured in drowning, traffic or school building collapse mishaps dropped in 2010, Yu says.

"The improvements on campus security management are obvious, but loopholes regarding regional unbalances still exist," he says. "Schools and kindergartens in rural areas face more potential safety problems than those in urban areas."

For example, the height of outer walls in rural schools is low and most of them have no security monitoring facilities, he says.

"Some schools have no security management mechanisms because of poor funds. Changing the security environment nearby campuses is a long-term process," he says.

The MOE has also worked with other ministries and shared resources with the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund to help fight the problem.

"Campus security should not only be the responsibility of education departments. More social support is necessary," says Xiong Bingqi, deputy director of the Beijing-based 21st Century Education Research Institute.

He says government investment in campus security is far from enough and school vehicles should be included in the budgets of local governments' compulsory education funds.

"Some kindergartens and schools are already burdened with tight budgets for teachers, let alone the extra payment for hiring professional security," he says.