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.
