Session 4.1 Disaster Risk Reduction through Education: Safe Schools

Session 4.1 Disaster Risk Reduction through Education: Safe Schools

Session Objectives Understand how the INEE Minimum Standards categories relate to safe schools and be aware of the range of mitigation, preparedness and response strategies and activities that are needed to ensure safe schools Review good practices and lessons learnt from the region to minimize the negative impact of the use of educational institutions as shelters and formulate concrete advocacy messages and strategies Understand that safer school construction is both critical and possible and be able to utilise the INEE Guidance Notes on Safer School Construction

Which INEE Minimum Standards categories most directly relate to safe schools? Access & Learning Environment Teachers & Other Education Personnel Teaching & Learning Education Policy & Coordination Standard categories (and standards) are INTERDEPENDENT Cross cutting issues: Human and children’s rights Gender HIV/AIDS Disability and vulnerability

Prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response activities within ALL INEE Minimum Standards categories safe schools Access & Learning Environment Teachers & Edu Personne l Teaching & Learning Education Policy & Coordinatio n Create safe learning environments with safe construction and retrofit Maintain safe learning environments with school disaster management Protect access to education with continuity planning Teach and learn disaster prevention and preparedness Build a culture of access and safety

Safe Schools: School as Shelter Are schools used as shelters in the case of disasters? If so, what are the challenges to continuing education? What are good practices to minimising and eventually eliminating the use of schools as shelter?

Safe Schools: Schools as Shelter Steps to take to minimise the negative impact of the use of school as shelter Guidance from Safe Schools in Safe Territories (UNICEF 2009): Prior identification of alternative locations If you can avoid the use of schools as shelter: Predefine where school spaces should exist to avoid the coexistence of school activity with other uses Separate the places where schooling activities occur from shelter space, prioritising the safety of the education community Obtain guarantees that the space will be in a reasonable state when it is returned to habitual use, and where possible, improve deficiencies (ie improving sanitation, reinforce structures) Establish a timeline for returning the educational space to its original function

Safe Schools: Safer School Construction Frequency and magnitude of extreme climactic events rising; school children, infrastructure increasingly effected: Sichuan earthquake (2008): more than 7,000 children killed in their schools; an estimated 7,000 classrooms destroyed Cyclone Sidr in Bangladesh (2007): 496 school buildings destroyed, 2,110 more damaged Super Typhoon Durian in the Philippines (2006): 20m USD damage to schools, including 90-100% of school buildings in three cities and 50-60% of school buildings in two other cities Pakistan earthquake (2005): at least 17,000 students in schools killed, 50,000 seriously injured, leaving many disabled and over 300,000 children affected. 10,000 school buildings destroyed; in some districts 80% of schools were destroyed

It is critical to get safer school construction right the first time around World Bank’s Education Note on Building Schools: Putting all children worldwide in school by 2015 will constitute, collectively, the biggest building project the world has ever seen. Some 10 million new classrooms will be built in over 100 countries. The cost of achieving EFA is already much higher because of past failures to maintain schools properly. Of the estimated 6 billion annual price tag for EFA construction, 4 billion is to replace classrooms that are literally falling down.

In addition to saving lives, sustaining economies and minimizing harm to students, teachers, school personnel, safer school construction is urgent because: Safer schools can minimize the disruption of education activities and thus provide space learning, healthy development Safer schools can be centers for community learning, community activities – for fighting poverty, reducing risk and coordinating response and recovery efforts Safer schools can serve as emergency shelters to protect not just the school population but the community a school serves Approaches to safer school construction and retrofit that engage the broader community can have an impact that reaches beyond the school and serve as a model for safer construction and retrofit of homes, community health centers, and other public and private buildings.

Four components of the Guidance Notes 1) General information and advocacy points: need & rationale for safer school buildings, success stories & guiding principles (raise awareness; foster community ownership; evaluate process to improve practice) 2) Suggested Steps Identifying Key Partners Assessment: Hazard Assessments; Vulnerability Assessments; Site &Structural Assessments; Community Vulnerabilities & Capacity; Risk Assessment of Building Practices and Materials Adopting building codes and retrofit standards Prioritization Designing a School or Retrofitting Plan Partnering with the Construction Industry 3. Basic Design Principles: Earthquakes; Extreme Wind Events; Flood; Landslide; Windfires 4. References to relevant resources

Group activity Assess one of two issues (that is most relevant for your work): a) Identifying key partners and setting up a coordination group (pages 14-18) b) Determining risk (pages 19-24) Review the guidance in depth, discuss the content and identify guidance within the tool that you can utlise. Guiding questions: a) Are there guidance points within the document that your organization is already meeting? b) Are there guidance points that your organization could utilize for safer school construction? How will you work to integrate them into your work? c) Are key questions or tools missing?

Guidance Notes on Safer School Construction should be shared widely, adapted for local context and used to: Guide discussion, planning and design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of school construction, including strengthening Education Sector Plans and to develop National Action Plan for Safe Schools Inform the design of training and capacity building on safer school construction Inform collaborative advocacy on issues related to safer school construction

Session 4.2 Disaster Risk Reduction through Education: Teaching and Learning

Session Objectives Be aware of the good practices and concrete strategies for the integration of disaster prevention and preparedness and principles of environmental protection inside and outside the curriculum and for training teachers Have utilised Riskland and brainstormed possible uses within your system (learners, students, teachers, community members)

Teaching and Learning Standards Standard 1: Curricula Standard 2: Teacher Training Standard 3: Instruction Standard 4: Assessment Teach and learn disaster prevention and preparedness: Disaster prevention and preparedness and principles of disaster-resilient construction and environmental protection inside and outside the curriculum Engage teachers and students in adapting, developing and testing strategies and materials for

Curricula (formal and non-formal) Challenges to overcome: Make certain that advice is technically accurate (science of natural hazards, hazard awareness) Don’t just leap to response-preparedness without introducing physical and environmental protection Switch from emphasis on passive public awareness to active public learning Good practice from France: child centered, active learning strategy Dream Collection: Preventionweb.net/go.php/edumaterials

Teacher Training and Capacity Development Strategies: Embed competencies in higher education programmes for teacher training; partnerships with pedagogic institutes Development of distance learning self-study tools to support low-cost dissemination of education Development of in-service and continuing education curricula for training Good practices: Sri Lanka, Turkey Searchable database of programmes, online courses: www.unisdr.org/cadri/activities/index.php Training modules: www.unisdr.org/dadri/dmtp-modules

RISKLAND!

Session 4.3 Disaster Risk Reduction through Education: Participation, Policy and Coordination

Risk Reduction through Education: Participation, Policy and Coordination Components of School Disaster Management: 1. Assessment and planning 2. Risk Reduction 3. Response Capacity Development System Disaster Management: Education Preparedness and Response Plans within government policy, including funding for the implementation and capacity building 1. Alternative school locations 2. Off-site back-up of key student records and materials 3. Plans for continuity of student learning 4. Plans for continuity of core operations: staffing and communications

Risk Reduction through Education: Participation, Policy and Coordination Within a group, focus on strengthening: 1) School Disaster Management Plan 2) Education Preparedness and Response Plans What points of good practices can you incorporate into your existing plans? How will you integrate them into your work? How will you need to work with and how will you do it? What advocacy messages will be effective in moving forward this issue within your school/ country? Who do you need to target and how will you do this?