THE Children’s Act Chapter 5.06 considers schools to be places of safety. Schools as registered institutions must uphold safety standards. It is quite sad to observe that schools in Zimbabwe seem not to be providing a sense of security to learners given what has been happening lately.
For example, on June 10, seven learners were burnt to death in a commuter omnibus in Gweru.
On March 16, 2023, a Globe and Phoenix Primary School classroom caved into an illegal underground mining tunnel, with 17 pupils aged between 10 and 11 getting injured, one girl seriously.
On November 7, 2024, a school Toyota Hiace mini bus carrying 19 students from Nyangani High School veered off the road and overturned. One student died on the spot and others were injured.
On March 25, 2026 at Falcon College, a 13-year-old learner drowned after a canoe capsized in a dam and on June 11, 2026 two Early Childhood Development learners drowned in a disused swimming pool at Hartzell Central Primary School.
The foregoing incidents reflect laxity in schools where child protection and safeguarding are concerned. It is the intent of this opinion piece to argue for regular risk mapping in schools by heads of institutions together with members of the School Development Committees and safeguarding officers.
Risk mapping
Risk mapping is a process of assessing the school environment with a focus on identifying areas, spaces or situations that can pose danger to learners, workers, volunteers, interns and visitors to the school.
The process of risk mapping goes further than identification of situations that can give rise to danger or abuse by codifying the possible impact of such risks by using colours or values for the likelihood of risks. In terms of colour coding, red would mean fix the problem today, yellow would mean fix soon and green would mean safe.
In terms of risk values, every risk would be assessed in terms of low, medium and high. Risk mapping or assessment gives an insight into the likelihood of a risk and its perceived impact.
For example, in the case of the Hartzell, the risk is in the red zone in terms of colour coding and of high value, therefore needing mitigation immediately. Every school in Zimbabwe should have a risk map that displays areas that can potentially occasion abuse or danger to everyone in the school. The risk map should be where every person in the school should access.
For example, a toilet, the head’s office, a swimming pool and an unlit veranda can be captured as unsafe spaces by way of risk mapping. Risk mapping provides early warning signs to decision makers.
Risk mapping is important because it provides early warning signs to decision makers. For example, an unfenced swimming pool identified as a risk for learners gives an opportunity for decision makers to ensure that security and supervision of that space are provided.
In the case of Hartzell, the head of the school, members of the school development committee, the education learner welfare department, the responsible authority and the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education in-toto owe a duty of care towards the learners and should not have left an unused swimming pool accessible to learners. Those who owe a duty of care towards children should employ safeguards through risk mapping and management.
It is a good practice to have safeguarding officers in schools who can work in intimate cahoots with accounting officers to do risk assessment and mitigation.
Any reasonable head of a school, in the case of Hartzell, should have acted with diligence, skill and care to prevent the unfortunate incident of the drowning of those two learners.
It was indeed foreseeable that such an accident could happen and necessary steps should have been taken to avoid that. The necessary steps would have been, among other things to decommission or secure the pool.
The primary duty of care in this case lies with the head, responsible authority and the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education. The ministry must compel the employment of safeguarding officers in both private and public schools so that they can be responsible for risk assessment and mitigation.
Heads of schools may not be everywhere like a spirit; they may need intellectual sounding boards on issues of safeguarding.
For this writer, in the case of Hartzell, arresting the caretaker and supervisor was ill-advised because they did not have independent authority to decommission or secure the pool. The ultimate responsibility here lies with the head and the institution itself, not just the employees tasked with maintenance.
Spending to save
Risk mapping would have flagged the abandoned pool as a high-impact hazard and risk maps would have made the danger visible to all stakeholders thereby preventing the tragedy. To that effect, it is critical to note that resources should have been deployed towards either securing the disused pool or decommissioning it.
In safeguarding, spending is associated with saving because repair is four times more expensive than safeguarding.
In the case of Hartzell, lives were lost, with such losses to the concerned families come sentimental damage that defy measurement.
The parents who lost their children through negligence by omission occasioned by primary duty bearers should sue for delictual damages. Let criminal law sanction and civil law price the damage in this case. This should be done with the end goal of deterrence.
Closing thoughts
A string of safeguarding cases of negligence was cited in the vignette; it is the belief of this writer that those issues would have been reduced if the concerned schools had safeguarding practices that entail risk mapping and mitigation.
Given accidents that are happening in schools on a regular basis, it is incumbent upon the government of Zimbabwe through the ministries of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare and that of Primary and Secondary Education to consider having safeguarding officers in schools whose mandate would be on child protection and safeguarding.
Dr Aribino is Zimcare Trust country director and a former vice-chairperson of Chikurubi Special Prisons board. He writes here in his personal capacity.