Global Program for Safer Schools (GPSS)

Download the Roadmap for Safer Schools Guidance Note

Established in 2014, the Global Program for Safer Schools (GPSS) was launched by the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) with a focus on integrating risk considerations into education infrastructure investments. After two years of implementation, the Program will initiate a new phase detailed below.

The Program’s development objective is to save lives, reduce the physical impact of disasters on school infrastructure, and minimize the disruption of education service resulting from disasters, by facilitating and promoting informed investments at scale in the safety of new and existing school infrastructure at risk from natural hazards. The focus is primarily on public school infrastructure in developing countries.

For its second phase, the Program has the following four Specific Objectives with expected outcomes.

Specific Objective 1: Facilitate and support synergies between the work of development partners, academia, and the private sector to develop global evidence-based knowledge on safety and resilience of school infrastructure networks.

Expected outcomes cover the following areas:

Impacts of disaster risk on the education sector. Analytic work will be conducted to consolidate existing evidence on how disasters affect the education sector worldwide. This work includes gathering data on historical damages and losses, generating a Global Library of School Infrastructure, and defining a standard methodology for vulnerability and damage assessment (V&DA) of school buildings in the aftermath of a disaster.
Solutions and innovation for safe and resilient school infrastructure networks. Activities will focus on developing a range of solutions for seismic rehabilitation of different school building typologies following the Global Structural Classification, and will generate evidence-based knowledge about construction technologies for school buildings in remote areas, regulatory frameworks for school infrastructure, and outcomes of community-based interventions for school reconstruction.
Informed investments for vulnerability reduction of school infrastructure networks. Activities under this component will focus on developing three critical topics: estimating global expenditure of school infrastructure in developing countries, prioritizing and optimizing rehabilitation investments, and designing long-term investment plans.

Specific Objective 2: Integrate risk reduction considerations into World Bank education infrastructure operations.

Expected outcomes cover the following areas:

Guidance notes and tools for task teams to integrate risk into World Bank operations. This component focuses on the development of operational tools to help task teams, including “A Roadmap for Safer Schools” (guidance note) that draws on outcomes from the first two years of the program to enhance and improve the roadmap. It will also generate knowledge products to illustrate each of the steps. “A Roadmap for Recovery and Reconstruction of School Infrastructure” (guidance note) will also be developed. The purpose of this roadmap and guidance note will be to support Bank task teams in their dialogue with governments on recovery and reconstruction, and to improve the safety and resilience of educational infrastructure in affected areas following a disaster.

Specific Objective 3: Provide technical advice and facilitate the design of risk-informed investments in school infrastructure in targeted countries.

Expected outcomes cover the following areas:

Diagnosis of school safety at country level. To inform new engagements on school safety, this component supports rapid country-level diagnostics. The diagnostic reports will follow the methodology of the GPSS “Roadmap for Safer Schools,” which was developed during the first phase of the GPSS. These reports will provide a rapid assessment of the vulnerability of existing school infrastructure to natural hazards and climate change, and will help to identify factors that contribute to risk. While a more in-depth risk assessment may be required to inform a national school safety investment program, this initial diagnostic will provide the necessary insights into what kind of institutional and policy actions would be required for effective implementation, what improvements would be needed to enhance the quality and enforcement of buildings codes, and how the institutional capacity for risk reduction in the education sector can be further strengthened
Grant resources for in-country activities. This component will provide support to select countries that are interested in moving the safer schools agenda forward and that wish to receive GFDRR grant resources for technical assistance activities designed to influence existing school infrastructure investment programs or lay the foundation for new programs. This support would include (1) creating an enabling institutional, policy, and regulatory environment for school safety by improving the quality and enforcement of building codes and improving the capacity of institutions to oversee and guide the implementation of a school safety program; and (2) improving school investment and construction practices by providing technical support to guide decisions about the location of new schools, the prioritization of existing high-risk schools, and the selection of optimal technical solutions to reduce risks.

Specific Objective 4: Make available solutions and knowledge products.

Expected outcomes cover the following areas:

Web-based platform and IT solutions. The GPSS web platform will be consolidated with all of the information collected by GPSS including:
- The Global Library of School Infrastructure
- Results of studies
- Roadmaps and toolkits
- Global data on school location and exposure to natural hazards among other information
- Web-based tools for school infrastructure inventory

The Platform will also make available the knowledge products developed under the GPSS and all relevant and disclosable technical documentation from World Bank projects on school safety.

Acceleration of solutions through e-learning. Training material will also be developed and integrated into the World Bank Open Learning Campus (OLC), with a course on safer schools as an expected output.

Resource: GFDRR

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Global Program For Safer Schools Brochure	1.64 MB	Download