The Indian Express 28.08.2012
Civic schools to conduct traffic classes for students
Civic education board chief Pradip Dhumal said the initiative aims
at involving students in ensuring effective implementation of traffic
rules
THE education board of Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) will
start mandatory traffic classes once a week in all the schools run by
the civic body. The initiative aims at teaching basic traffic rules to
students and take their help in spreading the message of road safety.
Initially, the project will be implemented for students of classes
V-VII.
PMC education board runs as many as 294 schools in the city with
Marathi, Urdu, Kannada and English as mediums of language. A few private
schools will also participate in the exercise, officials said.
Civic education board chief Pradip Dhumal said the initiative
aims at involving students in ensuring effective implementation of
traffic rules.
“The classes will be conducted once a week in all the PMC-run
schools with the help of city traffic police. We had conducted a
training session for principals and teachers of the schools on Saturday.
These teachers can educate students on safe practices to be followed on
roads, including the use of helmets and seat belts. Children can
convince their parents and elders to follow rules easily,” said Dhumal.
During the training programme, teachers were taught about
different manual signals. Teachers hope that the initiatives will be
well-received in their respective schools.
“In the school time table, five hours are dedicated for physical
education every week. We have decided to use one hour of this slot for
traffic classes. We have also decided to print as many as 1 lakh
traffic rule books to be distributed among students,” said Dhumal.
“Traffic education is part of the school curriculum in many foreign
countries. We are planning to use the concept of ‘catch them young’ so
that children inculcate the habbit of following traffic rules and also
spread awareness about it,” said a traffic police official.