Jamshedpur, July 1: The recent spurt in cases of eve-teasing and sexual assaults has set off alarm bells in city schools.

Most schools in the city have decided to set up cells to deal with cases of sexual abuse and regularise sex education sessions.

Tata Steel, in association with the government, called a meeting of school principals a couple of days ago. It was decided at the meeting that efforts would be made to spread awareness among school students regarding AIDS and sexual abuse at workplaces schools and colleges. Programmes on these issues will launched some time later this year,” said Prema Balasubramanian, principal of DBMS English School.

Some schools have aready got cracking with the problem at hand. There are schools that have professional counsellors and resource persons conducting sex education sessions at least once every two to three months, others have instituted cells comprising their senior teachers to work in this direction.

Sister Flavian, principal of Carmel Junior College, conducts sex education and awareness classes for her students right from class I. “It is distressing to see the rising number of incidents of sexual harassment and eve-teasing in the city. Our city is a conservative one and if girls do not feel safe here, it is an alarming signal,” she said. “I give value education classes where I tell my students that they should be aware of their body. Recently I have started sex education classes for the Class VII students,” Sister Falvian said.

Schools like DBMS and Loyola will have cells monitoring sexual abuse cases functioning in a week’s time. “I received a directive from the Jamshedpur Jesuit Society which said all Jesuit schools have decided to compulsorily institute such cells. It would comprise seven teachers — four female and three male and out of the four female teachers one should be from outside the school,” said Father Augustine Vattamattam, principal of Loyola School.

Vidya Bharati Chinmaya Vidyalaya (VBCV), Kerala Samajam Model School (KSMS) and Narbheram Hansraj English School (NHES) have decided to regularise their counselling sessions on sexual abuse. “We have been inviting city doctors and counsellors to conduct these sessions for our senior girl students. But I feel there is a need to counsel the boys, too,” said Vipin Sharma principal of VBCV. “We have been holding closed-door sessions with senior girls of the school where we not only discuss their problems, but also explain how they could avert such situations by being alert,” she added.

“We have sex education as part of our curriculum. We also have a weekly session for students of class VIII to X on value education and personality development and topics like sexual abuse and sex education are dealt with at length. We have engaged a city-based professional to hold these sessions,” said Meeta Jakhanwal, principal of NHES.

Nandini Shukla, principal of KSMS, said: “Though we don’t have any exclusive cell, we do have counselling sessions for our senior students. While we tell the girls about their physiological changes and educate them to how to distinguish between friendly behaviour and lewd advances, we tell boys about their hormonal changes and also the need for them to behave responsibly.”