A comparative study on safety and environmental health of public and private schools of Qazvin

Abstract Background: Preparing a suitable physical environment for schools will allow us to improve the efficiency of educational programs. Objective: To compare the security and environment health of public and private schools of Qazvin. Methods: This comparative study was carried out on randomly selected schools including 20 private and 68 public schools of Qazvin in 2001. A pre-designed questionnaire was filled out through interview, observation and measuring the variables related to safety and environmental health. The collected data were compared with the existing criteria and analyzed and examined using t-test and Fisher exact test. Findings: The safety and environmental health was generally poor in both sectors. Only in 3 out of 34 items (one omitted from the study due to invalid criteria of measurement) the health requirements were satisfactorily met in both sectors. In contrast, it was shown that in three out of 34, the safety and environmental health in private schools was nonexistent. Regarding all safety and health requirements, it was revealed that in adopting 4 criteria, the private sector showed a more acceptable condition than public sector, whereas for other 8 criteria the public sector preceded the private one and proved to be meaningful, statistically. Conclusion: It can be concluded that the public schools in terms of safety and environmental health are practicing a higher standard comparing with those in private sector.