Visiting the scene of September's school massacre in Russia, Fred Van Leeuwen was in despair about how teachers elsewhere could help—but he has found a way. By Steve Packer.

“This tragedy is far from over,” says Fred Van Leeuwen, general secretary of Education International, on the phone from his organisation's headquarters in Brussels.

He is referring, of course, to the massacre at Beslan N1 school, in the Russian state of North Ossetia, on 3 September. Among the 330 people killed or still officially classed as missing were 119 children and 20 teachers. Many other children are still in hospital, some of them in Moscow.

Van Leeuwen visited Beslan with a delegation from the Russian teachers' union on the eve of World Teachers' Day on 5 October. They talked to several teachers who had survived and the families of teachers who had died. They also visited some of their colleagues recovering in hospital.

“We found the town still in shock,” says Van Leeuwen, who admits he had never even heard of North Ossetia until it hit the headlines. “They have a 40-day mourning period, so they were still in mourning. It's a custom there that, when someone dies, you put all their personal belongings on display for the 40 days and visitors are expected to touch some of them. It's quite an emotional experience.”

The first thing he noticed on arriving was the new cemetery not far from the airport. “That you notice immediately, particularly when we were there, because there were a lot of flowers.”

There is hardly anything of the school left intact, and the site will never be used for that purpose again. “All of us, we know that school buildings, wherever you go in the world, are almost all the same. There aren't many variations,” says Van Leeuwen. “So you walk through these ruins of what are unmistakably school buildings. I didn't need a tour. I could walk right to the teachers' room and the gym because it's laid out like school buildings everywhere. And that makes it even more frightening. I could almost hear children screaming.

“It was overwhelming, because we still saw little shoes and other stuff that hadn't been cleaned up.”

Funding a future

Although the main purpose of the visit was to show solidarity, he did find a way that teachers everywhere could be of practical help through Education International (EI).

“There's not much you can do but show moral support, but we came to the conclusion that it would be helpful if we could at least ensure that the 35 children of the teachers who died could be guaranteed some further education. Primary and secondary education is no problem because it's free there. But, after that, these families may run into difficulties because a father or mother has died.”

Education International has been able to collect about €60,000 ($100,000) so far.

“I'm afraid we're going to need €100,000 to €150,000 this year to be safe,” says Van Leeuwen. “It's a fund that will start operating between five and seven years from now because most of the children are young. Until then, we can invest the money to generate the amount we believe we'll need.”

Moral support

Beslan is a poor town in a developing part of Russia. Families with five or six children are typical.

Van Leeuwen visited a family in which a mother and three children had died, and another that had lost a mother and one child. “They were mothers and small children and brothers and sisters… We talked in their small apartments. We came with some financial support collected by the Russian teachers' union, but not much conversation was possible. They were very emotional visits.”

The surviving teachers still seemed to be in a degree of shock, he says. “We talked to the deputy head of the school and it's as if they don't understand what has happened. Some blame themselves for not having been able to rescue all of the children, which, of course, is a terrible thing to live with.”

The teachers are not working but are continuing to receive a salary, and will have employment if and when they are ready to resume work. Some have gone on holiday with their families at government expense, and they are getting psychological support.

“We went there to provide moral support and let the people know that we consider this an attack on all of us—on schools, children and parents everywhere. And that was appreciated.

“But at the same time, I felt uncomfortable not being able to do something substantial.”

STEVE PACKER is sub-editor of Australian Educator.