Improving School Commute Paths by Removing School Walls... Busan Office of Education Establishes Safety Measures

Busan Metropolitan Office of Education has decided to remove school fences or trim trees in flower beds to open up the visibility of school routes.

Busan Metropolitan Office of Education announced that, in response to the death of an elementary school student in Yeongdo-gu, it held countermeasure meetings and collected on-site opinions on the 2nd and 3rd, and has prepared safety measures for students on school routes.

The Busan Office of Education will identify schools where fence relocation is possible among those needing school zone improvements and will work on improving pedestrian routes. They plan to demolish school fences to expand walkways and, depending on conditions, open temporary entrances so that students can commute to and from school safely.

To secure drivers’ visibility, school trees and opaque school fences will also be improved. They will actively utilize school grounds to create safe school routes.

‘School route safety keepers’ will be assigned to 50 elementary schools with poor commuting conditions and high accident risk areas such as steep slopes.

Although there are existing senior clubs in Busan and child safety keepers from the police agency, there is a shortage of personnel for creating safe school routes.

The Office of Education will assign school route safety keepers to schools with poor commuting environments to conduct broad safety guidance activities on school routes inside and outside school zones, as well as obstacle monitoring activities. Personnel will be allocated differently depending on each school’s conditions, and the number of schools with assigned safety keepers will be expanded in the future.

The school buses currently supporting 104 schools in areas with poor commuting conditions will also be expanded to support schools in high-altitude and steep slope areas.

Busan Office of Education.

Pendants that make it easy to identify student movement even on rainy or cloudy days will be produced and distributed to lower-grade elementary students. This is to enhance visibility and ensure student safety.

Student safety education on school routes will also be strengthened. Case-based education will be conducted to prepare for everyday risks and safety accidents, and clubs will be operated to discover and improve risk factors inside and outside schools and around school routes.

‘Visiting safety experience education,’ where a vehicle equipped with safety experience facilities and safety experts visit schools directly, will also be conducted.

Inspections of commuting risk factors near school zones will be strengthened. They will directly check whether the results of last year’s survey conducted on 40 schools and other risky commuting schools are being implemented. Inspections will also be intensified for schools with poor commuting conditions where construction is ongoing nearby.

Procedures will be established to ensure that school field opinions are properly reflected in the ‘Traffic Safety Implementation Plans’ that local governments establish annually. Along with this, the Office of Education plans to request local governments to allow education officials to participate in traffic safety implementation plan meetings.

Ha Yun-su, Superintendent of Busan Metropolitan Office of Education, said, “All our policies prioritize student safety first,” and added, “We will fulfill our role to secure student safety and strongly demand improvements from related agencies for parts that are difficult to resolve on our own.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.