Anyone walking into a Gujarat school without a principal’s written permission can now be reported to the police. The state Education Department issued a circular on October 21 that covers primary, secondary and higher secondary schools, Gujarat Samachar reported. It also bars filming, photography, interviews and live streaming involving pupils or teachers unless the principal agrees in writing.
Register, escort, written consent
The rules, as reported by Gujarat Samachar and Bombay Samachar, set out a short routine for any outsider:
- Get written permission from the principal or head of the school before entering.
- Sign the visitor register with your details.
- Stay with the principal, a designated teacher or an authorised staff member in classrooms, labs, libraries, hostels, playgrounds and washrooms.
- Record no video, audio or photographs, and stream nothing, without written consent, which the principal may give only for lawful, official purposes.
Government officials on authorised duty are exempt. Schools must also keep pupils’ personal data, photographs and videos from being stored or shared in ways that put their privacy or safety at risk.
If someone enters without permission, refuses to leave or starts filming, the principal has to inform the local police straight away and alert the District Education Officer, the District Primary Education Officer or the block-level education officer. Neither report mentions a specific fine or penalty; the circular refers to action under existing law.
Child privacy on paper, school inspections in practice
The department grounds the circular in the in loco parentis principle, under which a school stands in for parents during school hours, in the right to privacy under Article 21 as the Supreme Court read it in the Puttaswamy judgment, and in NCPCR school-safety guidelines. Videos of children shot on campus and posted on YouTube or Instagram stay online long after the event, and a child cannot meaningfully consent to that.
The timing points to a second reason. Bombay Samachar reported that the department acted on a demand from school management bodies and a letter from a teachers’ association. It also noted that AAP leaders have been touring schools to check conditions, and Congress leaders have inspected Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation schools and publicised what they found. Under the new rules, a councillor or party worker needs the principal’s written nod before such a walk-through can happen, and that call now rests with a head teacher who reports to the department.
IANS, in a report carried by Social News XYZ, described the same rules and the same official-duty exemption.
Parents, journalists and opposition councillors
For parents, little changes on an ordinary day: a visit to meet a class teacher now means signing the register and, strictly, holding a written slip from the principal. Neither report says whether schools can give standing permission for parent-teacher meetings or annual days, so ask your school how it will handle routine visits.
Journalists and NGOs that report on midday meals, broken toilets or teacher shortages now need written consent to shoot inside a campus. Footage from outside the gate, or from parents who choose to speak, falls outside the circular. Elected representatives who are not on official government duty fall under the same permission rule as any other visitor, which leaves opposition councillors with fewer ways to document conditions in municipal schools.
The circular adds one more duty to principals and teachers already stretched by non-teaching work, a load the state set up a panel to review earlier this month, as we reported. Running a visitor register and escorting every guest falls on the same staff.
Sources: Gujarat Samachar, Bombay Samachar, IANS via Social News XYZ
This report was written with AI assistance from the publicly reported sources linked here; each fact was cross-checked against at least two of them.