A city school has decided to maintain a register to keep track of the time spent by each student in the washroom.

Students at South City International School will have to mention the “in and out time” whenever they use the washroom in school from next week, the principal announced during the assembly on Monday morning.

The new rule, to be implemented from July 1, is a measure the school has decided to adopt after a Class X girl was found dead in a washroom of GD Birla Centre for Education on Friday.

“We will implement the rule from next Monday because we need more hands outside the washrooms (both boys and girls) to maintain the register. If anything goes wrong, the school should know where the child is,” principal John Bagul said.

The school thinks the measure would require a lot of monitoring but it would help “safeguard the school’s interest”.

Students are known to seek refuge in the school washroom to escape bullying in class or at times to spend some time alone if they are feeling down on a particular day. Pranks in the washroom are also not unknown.

“These things would stop and the children would be watched all the time,” a teacher said.

The school thinks the move is a show of greater “accountability” on the part of the institution. But the authorities admit it would not be a sure-shot prescription to prevent children from harming themselves if they so wished.

Stress must be eliminated and both the school and parents need to work together to avert pressure.

The school is also launching an “extra mile programme” where teachers in pairs would visit the homes of students of classes I, IX and XI after school hours.

The school had sent a mail to all parents in these three classes in April with an attached slip seeking their approval or disapproval for the programme.

“The greatest benefit of such visits is a better understanding of the child’s environment. It would also help develop mutual trust and faith among parents, students and teachers,” the email signed by the principal said.

“We know there are dysfunctional families and we intend to pay a visit to see the family set-up and the home environment so that we can help students better,” principal Bagul said.

About 30 per cent of the parents have refused to be part of the programme.