Abstract:

School security is an issue that has frequently been brought up by the media organs and with which the public has been occupied recently, and this issue attracts the attention of researchers in our country as well as throughout the world. The opinions of school principals who are expected to have a grasp of most of the problems as to school security, on the other hand, are especially important in that they determine the way to be followed by the policy makers and implementers related to education system. This study aims to determine the threats jeopardizing school security, the measures taken to ensure school security in line with this and the suggestion for the share holders through school principals. The study sample consisted of 15 school principals working in Yakutiye and Palandöken, the central districts of the Erzurum province, who were chosen by means of the maximum variation sampling method, one of the purposeful sampling methods. The data in this study, which was designed in the basic qualitative research, were collected through semi-structured interview forms and analyzed using the content analysis method. The findings obtained by analyzing the research data were divided into two themes. With respect to this, the threats to school security were grouped under two themes as structural and educational, the measures taken towards ensuring school security as administrative and educational, and finally, the suggestions for ensuring school security as procedural and physical. The threats under the structural theme were mostly beyond the authority and power of school principal sand was considered under the jurisdiction of the senior administration. It was seen that the physical and administrative threats to school security could be eliminated more easily and decisively than the educational threats. Moreover, it was concluded that most of the administrative security threats were associated with the supply of human and material sources and their management.

Keywords: