School safety: “averages are no comfort”

Safety in education is high on the agenda. The new Free and Safe Education Act requires schools to deal with this structurally. According to education expert Lotte Benard, research is indispensable in this respect: “If people do not feel safe, it affects your whole education system.”

The new law does not come out of the blue. Throughout education, the topic of safety has been playing an important role in recent years. Benard explains why. “Thanks to the teacher shortage, more attention has been paid to teachers” working conditions,“ she says. ”Safety is an important part of that. If you want to retain your staff, you have to make sure they feel safe, seen and heard."

In addition, society has changed. “Through social media, information circulates at lightning speed. As a result, an incident becomes bigger faster than before. Also, parents are more articulate and socially adept towards schools.” But safety, according to Benard, is about much more than incidents alone. “We are asking more and more from schools, for instance in the field of citizenship. You can only teach those kinds of lessons in a safe environment. The basics have to be in order.”

The upcoming Free and Safe Education Act combines several existing and new obligations and targets both pupils and staff. “For pupils, there will be an extension to the existing safety monitor that measures cross-border behaviour, discrimination and other safety issues, among other things,” Benard explains. “Many schools already do this, but soon it will be enshrined in law.”

The staff side is also receiving explicit attention. “Schools should include information on staff perceptions of safety in their safety policy and evaluate it annually. It's about mapping it structurally and showing that you are working on it.” The law is not just about monitoring, but especially about follow-up.

An important distinction within integrated safety policy is that between actual and perceived safety. “Factual safety is about concrete incidents, such as a pupil with a knife or intimidation by parents,” says Benard. “Experienced safety is much more in the social aspects: can you voice your opinion, do you feel heard, how do colleagues treat each other., feel you feel safe?” According to Benard, it is precisely this perceived safety that is often underestimated. “Bullying, gossiping or exclusion occurs not only among pupils, but also among staff,” she stresses. In the long run, this can have major consequences. “If someone feels unsafe and unheard, they will call in sick or leave.”

That this is not a theoretical problem is also evident from the benchmark results in primary and secondary education from DUO-Onderwijs. “On average, schools seem to score well on social safety,” says Benard, “but especially with safety, averages and ‘majorities’ are no comfort: any significant minority indicates a structural risk. In an employee survey, you can still think in some areas: a six is enough. With safety, you can't. If five per cent feel unsafe, you have work to do. You have to aim for a ten.”

This is precisely why Benard is collaborating on the development of a new security research from DUO-Onderwijs. The study not only looks at incidents, but also at perceived safety, reporting safety and trust in policy. As such, it is in line with what schools will soon have to monitor by law, but also offers broader insights. “Schools gain insight into what is really going on and where they need to intervene. Employees do not always go to their managers, especially when it comes to (social) safety. An investigation, however, can make signals visible.”

Educationist Lotte Benard is Teamlead Data & Research Development at DUO-Onderwijs.