Ryan School Murder: Why Background Verification is Important

Ryan school murder brings the spotlight on regular background checks of personnel hired by the schools.

(Photo: Lijumol Joseph/ The Quint)

A seven-year-old boy in Gurugram was allegedly murdered by a 42-year-old conductor of one of the school buses, who has also now reportedly confessed that he tried to sexually assault the child. In another incident, a 5-year-old was raped by the school peon in the school premises. These two separate incidents that took place in the past couple of days draw our attention not only to the distressing rise in the number of such cases but also towards the negligence and sloppiness of schools in adopting necessary safeguards to provide a safe environment to children.

Furthermore, these are not two isolated incidents of heinous crimes taking place on school campuses. We have been witnessing dozens of such cases in the past few years, yet this has not stopped even the biggest and the most famous school in the country from being slipshod in conducting background screening of staff of the schools. During both the investigations, a host of security lapses were detected on the part of both the schools which vary from malfunctioning CCTV cameras and failure in getting the school buses inspected by RTA to lack of stringent background checks on staff members of schools.

Also Read: Sorry Ryan Pinto, 7-Year-Old Pradyumn is the Victim, Not You!

Need to Screen Candidates before Hiring at Schools

It is absolutely disturbing to know that both the alleged convicts did not go through any kind of background checks including police verification prior to their employment. One of the two convicts had been working in the organisation for the last three years and previously worked as the security guard for the same school. The other was reportedly fired from the school he was working earlier after students complained of his inappropriate behaviour.

In 2016, of all the screenings conducted by AuthBridge on candidates, 1 in every 10 candidates were found to misrepresent some information related to either education, employment, address, identity etc. to their prospective employers. This the scenario in corporates where employees are screened thoroughly before on-boarding. Why would the number be any better for schools and education institutes where background screening is not yet institutionalised?

It’s alarming to know the dismal state of security our kids get, when someone who was sacked for a crime in one place gets hired somewhere else.

Not only non-teaching staff, students are not safe even in the hands of teachers who are often employed on the basis of their educational qualifications and job experiences, without being subjected to any kind of background checks. The disturbing case of a Kolkata teacher who brutally thrashed a class 3 student for asking for a bathroom break is quite recent.

Last month, a similar case was reported from Lucknow in which a teacher was found mercilessly slapping a boy 40 times for not saying ‘present’ during the attendance call.

Also Read: Why Ryan Pinto is Not A ‘Victim of Unfortunate Circumstances’

Need for Stringent Background Checks

When it comes to risk mitigation, safety and compliance, schools in the country have not been very careful in ensuring these factors to prevent these unfortunate incidents. Police verification is mandatory for all institutions but schools often violate this and hire staff members without any checks, putting the lives of students at risk.

Teachers, staff and non-teaching staff right from peons to bus drivers have unsupervised, direct contact with children all day.

It may be surprising but a large number of bus drivers, despite being in custody of the health and safety of your children every day, are not subjected to complete background verification.

The problem of lack of strict background checks in schools is not just restricted to India.

In Texas, the number of cases of improper teacher-student relationships grew 80 percent over the last eight years.

Why is it so important to do a background check on the staff you are hiring? After all, aren’t most of them vetted by the previous school or another agency? Well, shockingly the answer is NO.

Also Read: If Ryan School Shuts Down, What of the Kids in Their Board Year?

Two officials of Ryan International, northern India head Francis Thomas and HR head Jeyus Thomas, in police custody on 11 September 2017. (Photo: IANS)

Searching Criminal Records

It is not so uncommon that an employee had no criminal record when they started their initial job, but have one in a span of a couple of years. It is vital that schools don’t make assumptions about what another employer may or may not have done few years ago, and conduct their due diligence.

Many schools think that installing surveillance cameras are enough to prevent any unfortunate incident, and they often overlook quality screening for all of their employees, including driving record screening, criminal records searching, drug testing, identity verification, and even screening personal and professional references.

An important and imperative part of the school’s mission and legal responsibility is to keep the children safe.

School employees should go under periodic criminal history checks even during the course of their employment. At the beginning, with background screening being conducted, schools will surely be surprised to see high discrepancies. This will gradually cool off with the formalisation of the process across schools and with more awareness people will stop faking information. When it comes to the safety of school children, I believe no level of background check is too much.

Also Read: Ryan School Murder: Unanswered Questions About Police Version

(The writer is Founder and CEO, AuthBridge and has been working in the background verification industry for more than a decade. He can be reached @iamajaytrehan . This is a personal blog and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)

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