Zoetermeer works together on safe elementary schools
To improve safety at elementary school, the Zoetermeer municipality, police and elementary school signed the covenant "School Safety Primary Education" on Wednesday, Oct. 1. Such cooperation already existed for secondary education. Zoetermeer is the first municipality in the Netherlands to extend this approach to primary education.
Mayor Michel Bezuijen: "We see a disturbing development nationwide: increasingly, young children, even as early as elementary school age, are becoming involved in security incidents such as harassment and theft. This calls for a firm, joint approach. With the agreements that schools, police and municipality are now making, we can identify more quickly, cooperate better and prevent incidents as much as possible."
Task distribution
The covenant describes who has what duties, how parties work well together and how they can share knowledge. The municipality supports schools with training and possible measures. The schools provide a safety plan and good contact with the municipality and police. The police involve schools when there are issues that schools can take into account. There are agreements on how to handle serious situations. And there is regular consultation between the municipality, police and schools. The work is district-oriented, because every district is different.
Citywide
With the covenant for primary education is, there is now the same school safety policy for primary, secondary and secondary schools. The covenant ensures that knowledge and experiences are shared so that schools can learn from each other. This creates a citywide network that not only responds to incidents, but also aims to prevent them.
