Guidelines on Paper, Gaps in Practice
Shivani Vaid Sharma
vaidshiva@gmail.com
Every year, schools affiliated with CBSE follow a long list of rules. Teachers must complete 50 hours of training on topics like gender sensitivity, stress management, moral education etc. Schools must have Complaints Committees, CCTV cameras, a helpline number on display and safety audit reports.
But even with all these rules in place, children are still dying inside schools because of bullying that was ignored, stress that went unnoticed, or safety gaps that should have been caught in time.
This raises an important question: if so many rules and programmes already exist, then where is the system actually failing? Is it the schools? The teachers? The students? Or the parents?
THE JAIPUR CASE
The most recent and painful example is from Jaipur. In November 2025, a nine-year-old girl studying at a well-known school fell from the fourth floor of her school building and died.
A CBSE inquiry later found that she had been bullied for 18 months. Her parents had complained more than once, but the school reportedly told them their daughter needed to “adjust” with her classmates. On the day she died, she is said to have gone to her class teacher five times in 45 minutes, asking for help. No help came.
The inquiry also found that the school had failed to control student access to the upper floors and that safety nets that should have been installed there were missing.
This case shocked the country partly because it happened at a top, well-reputed school, the kind of place parents usually trust without question.
NOT A ONE-TIME INCIDENT
Sadly, Jaipur is not the only such case. Over the years, similar incidents have happened in schools across different cities, children losing their lives because of bullying, unnoticed mental stress, poor supervision or unsafe buildings.
Each time, there is anger and shock. Inquiries are held, promises are made. But after some time, people move on and the same workshops and audits continue as before, without much real change.
ARE SCHOOLS DOING ENOUGH?
Many schools have Complaints Committees on paper, but very few of them actually meet regularly or take action when a complaint is made. Safety audits are often done just to complete a formality, not as a serious check.
When parents complain about bullying, many schools focus more on protecting their own reputation than on solving the problem.
ARE TEACHERS EQUIPPED OR JUST OVERLOADED?
Teachers do get trained on how to spot when a child is in distress and how to build a caring relationship with students. But most teachers are also managing large classrooms, heavy syllabi, and paperwork. This leaves them very little time or energy to actually pay close attention to each child.
So even if a teacher wants to help a struggling student, do they really have the time and support to do so? In many cases, the answer seems to be no.
WHAT ABOUT THE STUDENTS?
Bullying is rarely done by just one child. It usually involves a group, and often the children involved don’t fully realise how much harm they are causing.
Schools do run programmes on values and sensitivity, but it isn’t always clear if these lessons are actually changing how students behave with each other or if they are simply another item ticked off a checklist. Today’s children also face new pressures from social media and peer groups, which may need much more consistent attention than a few training sessions can offer.
PARENTS: A MORE COMPLICATED STORY
They also play an important role. Do they notice early signs that their child is struggling? Do they know how to push a complaint further if the school ignores it? Sometimes, parents trust a school’s reputation so much that they don’t push hard enough, even when their child says something like, “I don’t want to go to school, everyone troubles me,” as the Jaipur child had reportedly told her mother.
But there’s another side to this too. Many parents today are extremely busy with work and have very little quality time to spend with their children. This lack of emotional attention at home can affect how children behave including, in some cases, leading them to bully others. It would be unfair to blame only the school for this.
On the other hand, some parents go too far in the opposite direction. They are so protective of their children that they misuse child-safety laws over small classroom issues. This makes many teachers scared to correct or discipline students, even when it’s genuinely needed. A teacher who is afraid to act cannot really help a child in trouble, even with all their training.
THE BIGGER PICTURE
When we look closely at cases like Jaipur’s, we don’t usually find one big mistake. Instead, we find many small failures adding up, an ignored complaint, an overworked teacher, a safety audit that wasn’t done properly, a parent who was told to “wait and watch.” No single person may feel fully responsible and that is exactly the problem. When everyone can say “it wasn’t just me,” nobody ends up being truly accountable.
This doesn’t mean CBSE’s programmes are wrong. Gender sensitivity training, stress management, safety audits, and complaints committees are all genuinely useful. The real problem is that these have often become things schools do only on paper, instead of things they actually put into practice.
WHAT NEEDS TO CHANGE
CBSE, schools, teachers, students and parents, all of them have a role to play in why such tragedies keep happening. The question now is not about blaming one group, but about who is ready to change.
Are schools willing to treat every complaint seriously, instead of as a nuisance? Are teachers being given enough support to actually use what they’ve learned? Are students being taught in ways that truly shape their behaviour, not just their knowledge? And are parents and schools building enough trust to talk openly with each other before something goes wrong?
Until these questions are answered, not just on paper, but in real classrooms – cases like Jaipur’s are unlikely to be the last.
(The author is a CBSE Resource Person with extensive experience in school education)
