What does school size do： Safety perceptions of educators and students

The purpose of this study is to find out how teachers, principals, vice principals and students perceive school safety and how that differs related to school size. 194 educators and 1420 students＇ views were elicited by two self-deviced school safety inventories conducted in 10 state high schools in Istanbul in 2008. Cronbach alpha value for educators＇ safety perception inventory Cronbach was found to be 0.941 and 0.902 for Student School Safety Perception Inventory. Frequency, percentage, t-test, Kruskall Wallis H-analysis and Man Whitney U-techniques were used as statistical analysis. After analysis, it appeared that perceived safety problems in school as disciplines, interpersonal relations, school building, school counseling differ related to school size. When the school size increases, teachers reported that safety problems increase as well. Schools with 500-1000 students were perceived less problematic in discipline and interpersonal relations. Violence, drug dealing, carrying gun, stealing, appeared as common safety problems at schools. Principals and vice principals appeared as more optimistic than teachers in safety problems at schools. Female teachers and principals perceived building related problems, counseling problems more serious then male colleagues. School principals should scrutinize school safety problems, should develop school safety plans comprehensively and should update it regularly. Standards related to school size should be developed and number of students in a particular school should be determined according to those criteria. Social and cultural facilities should be built in connection with the number of students studying at school. Arrangements related to school size should take into account students grade, sex, duty of educators. School environment＇s safety should be paid more attention.