NOT all the people who find themselves in the teaching profession are driven by a passion to mould, develop and inspire young minds.

Equally, not all people who join the police service are driven by a desire for crime-busting.

Recent reports of teachers abusing pupils/students under their tutelage suggest need for school heads and parents to get together and establish protocols on how teaching staff relate to pupils/students.

It is not possible to always be expecting the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education to draw up these guidelines, because such processes take time to be implemented. The number of abuses being reported require swift and targeted responses.

What schools and committees representing parents can agree on is conducting regular sessions during assembly where school children are informed about what constitutes abuse of pupils/students by teachers. School authorities and parents can designate staff members or school counsellors to whom pupils/students can report such cases. The Ministry can follow up and polish the draft protocols.

Of course, such a structure can also on-board cases of bullying, because both teacher-student abuses and bullying are traumatic experiences for any child to experience.

The assumptions are that the point persons that school authorities and parents will agree on, are themselves not going to turn out into lustful monsters.

The recent cases of the Mkwasine, Chiredzi, school teacher and the Mberengwa deputy school head are particularly worrying in that the assailants were able to flee before arrest. Both instances suggest a disturbing lack of oversight on the part of schools’ leadership.

In the case of the fugitive Mkwasine teacher, it appears he abused the Grade Seven pupil several times undetected, while in the case of the Mberengwa deputy school head, the scale of the victims he abused is staggering for the school authorities not to have noticed, unless of course things have completely fallen apart at the school. The only laudable explanation would be that the school head was an absentee head. It is this absence or laxity that allowed the lustful deputy to exploit the situation to conduct the series of abuses.

Had it not been for one concerned teacher, more students would be at the mercy of the monster deputy head now on the run.

While in the interim the schools, with the assistance of the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education, are reviewing their systems, it is expected that pupils at both schools are being offered counselling.

It is understandable that there is an atmosphere of anxiety and distrust leading to calls for immediate reforms to ensure pupil/student safety in schools. The calls and demands for accountability and improved oversight of teachers’ conduct to prevent such breaches of trust in the future has never been more urgent.

The urgent calls for action underscore a shared hope that no child should endure betrayal of trust again.

By adopting some of these recommendations suggested above, schools can remain safer environments that pupils/students look forward to go to, and not ones they dread going to.