Scapegoating teachers will not make our schools safer

A dormitory that was set on fire in Utumishi Girls Academy, Gilgil. [File, Standard]

The tragic event at Utumishi Academy has once again exposed a troubling national habit: When disaster strikes in schools, teachers become the first suspects. Before investigations are concluded, public discourse shifts from seeking facts to finding individuals to blame. Yet history, research and common sense suggest that such an approach rarely delivers justice or lasting solutions.

Sociologist Stanley Cohen's theory of moral panic helps explain this phenomenon. In times of public fear and uncertainty, societies often search for easily identifiable groups to blame. These "folk devils" become convenient targets for public anger, allowing deeper systemic failures to escape scrutiny. In Kenya's education sector, teachers have increasingly become those convenient targets.

History offers several examples. Following school tragedies around the world, investigations have often revealed complex institutional failures rather than the negligence of a single individual. After the 1999 Columbine High School shooting in the United States, attention initially focused on teachers and school administrators. However subsequent investigations highlighted broader issues including mental health challenges, gaps in threat assessment systems and societal factors beyond the school's control. Similar lessons emerged after the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting where institutional communication failures and systemic shortcomings received as much attention as individual actions.

The Swiss Cheese Model of accident causation developed by psychologist James Reason provides another useful lens. The theory argues that disasters rarely occur because of one person's mistake. Instead they happen when multiple weaknesses within a system align. In education, these weaknesses may include inadequate counselling services, understaffing, insufficient training, poor communication structures, resource shortages and policy gaps. Focusing exclusively on teachers ignores the fact that schools operate within systems designed and funded by governments.

Whole-school approach

This raises an uncomfortable question: Why are teachers expected to prevent every conceivable tragedy when many schools lack adequate support structures? Teachers are trained to educate, mentor and guide learners. They are not intelligence officers, forensic psychologists or security experts. While they have a duty of care expecting them to predict every threat is unrealistic.

Moreover educational research consistently demonstrates that effective school safety depends on a whole-school approach involving parents, administrators, counsellors, policymakers and security agencies. According to studies by UNESCO, learner wellbeing and safety are strengthened when responsibility is shared across multiple stakeholders rather than concentrated on individual teachers.

None of this suggests that teachers should be immune from accountability. Where negligence is established appropriate action must follow. Accountability is essential in any profession. However accountability must begin with evidence not assumptions. It must examine systems before scapegoats and facts before emotions.

The tragedy at Utumishi Academy deserves a response grounded in truth rather than outrage. If Kenya genuinely seeks safer schools it must resist the temptation to blame teachers first and ask harder questions instead. What support systems existed? Were they adequate? Were schools sufficiently resourced? Were policies effectively implemented?

Mr Okelo is a teacher in Kajiado County