COVID-19 and School Safety - Comprehensive School Safety Framework Pillar 2: School Disaster Management

Location: Online    Start Date: 24 June 2020   End Date: 24 June 2020

Speakers: Hari Dongol, Sarah Morgan and Badrun Nahar Organiser: GADRRRES

Attendance: 300 participants

Webinar recording available on the GADRRRES YouTube channel:

Learning and Insights

For safe back to school returns, an all hazards approach is key, including (1) violence, (2) natural hazards, (3) conflict and (4) everyday hazards. Steps for effective school disaster management should entail (1) Knowing your dangers, (2) Reducing your dangers, (3) Preparing to respond (4) Planning for education and protection continuity and finally also (5) Monitoring, sharing and reaching out.

Case study: Safe Back to School Practitioners Guide – intended to help plan and implement an integrated, participatory process for safe school reopening. Key Principles for Safe Back to School:

● An integrated approach

● Child and youth participation

● Gender, inclusion and accessibility

● Whole school community

● Build on existing structures

● Build back resilient

Case Study: School Disaster Management in Multi-Risks Context of Bangladesh:

● Bangladesh is a disaster-prone country and it has a strong context of multi-hazards risks. Due to natural and manmade disasters, children are vulnerable and extremely unsafe. As Bangladesh has a huge river network, it faces repeated disasters all the year round.

● With the aim of ensuring equal access to safer education and learning environments for girls and boys in the most at-risk communities in the country, Plan International Bangladesh started work with the Safe School Initiatives project in the northern and southern part of the country. The project is working with pillar 2 of CSSF as its focus is to make community disaster resilient through strong school disaster management.

● As part of disaster management, the project working towards capacity building of the school disaster management committee, students task force group so that they can develop their own school safety plan and prepare themselves and the community to face multi hazards like flood, cyclone or latest COVID 19 pandemic. And they actually contribute to awareness raising in the community on education continuation of children at least at home, not to get their girls married off, taking care of children at home, etc.

● The school disaster management is not only working in the catchment area but also coordinating with the government to reduce the risk for children due to flood, Amphan cyclone or COVID-19 situation.

● Plan International Bangladesh has experience to integrate School Safety Plan, Disaster Risk Reduction issues in School Learning Improvement Plan (SLIP) and Upazilla (sub-district) Primary Education Plan (UPEP) initiated by the Ministry of Education. Due to this schools are implementing the school safety plan through the government. allocated budget also.

● Strong coordination with government agencies and communities of the school catchment area, advocacy initiatives of Students and youth groups is contributing to strengthen the resilience of the education system and build back better.

Resources and further reading

Safe Back to School: A Practitioner's Guide

Answers to participant questions

Could you elaborate on the term "body mapping" and what it entails?

Body mapping is a participatory tool for mapping risks and capacities in terms of protection issues in and around school. This has been useful in identifying risks which is generally not visible and usually difficult to expressed generally, this include: abuse exploitation; corporal punishment; harassment; bullying etc.

Process:

Divide children into groups: boys separate from girls, and older children separate from younger. Ask each group to trace the shape of a child’s body on a large piece of paper (or flipchart pages taped together). Ask the children to draw the risks and capacities they have for each part of their body on the big piece of paper:

Important to note: The person facilitating this activity must be prepared to respond appropriately if a child says or suggests they have experienced abuse. Consult with child-safeguarding and/or child protection colleagues when planning this activity.

Do you know if the Safe Back to School Practitioners Guide includes a multi-hazard early warning system that could be used at the school level?

Not as a tool or specific guidance but Technical Annex 5 - Participatory Education and Protection Continuity Planning would assist in supporting schools and local authorities to analyse gaps they have in early warning and support with planning to address gaps.

With COVID19, specifically, and if I understand that you mean ‘multi-hazard’, although we are now learning for future pandemics, it may not have been possible to have a perfect early warning system in place as so much of this particular pandemic has been unknown. However, if you mean ‘all hazards’ then within a Safe Schools-specific Context Analysis, and within school disaster management, and public awareness/public education key messages, we would stress the need for hazard identification i.e. to identify "expected hazards" ahead of time (in general). Of course, 'pandemic' was always theoretically understood as an 'expected hazard' - but it was the most neglected.

Could you elaborate on the role of teachers and how they could be trained on PFA?

Badrun Nahar-The role of our targeted school teachers:

1. Taking classes at school

2. Being member of School disaster management committee

3. Mentoring the students task force group (psychosocial group, evacuation group, search and rescue group, first aid group and early warning group)

4. Supporting children to represent in local govt meetings

5. Developing School safety plan, monthly and quarterly meeting organisation and updating the plan

6. Making the education continuation plan before disaster

7. Develop capacity building initiatives of project regular basis

8. Aware parents in the community on disaster preparedness etc

In our working area, there is no PFA as Parent Faculty Association. But we have a parents' group, champion father, champion mother etc. The teachers and youth group meet with them regularly through courtyard sessions and share with them the content related to disaster, child protection, and gender-based violence etc for enhancing their capacity and making them prepare for disaster. And yes, through our project we have scope to train them on PFA, but we need to find out the opportunities in the context.

Sarah Morgan – I understood PFA to mean Psychological First Aid but correct me if I am wrong! Yes, in Safe Back to School Practitioners Guide, the focus is on the well-being of both students and teachers and there are several tools linked to support a range of different mental health and psychosocial (MHPSS) support (see Technical Annex 4 in particular). Specific PFA tools are also linked (e.g. https://inee.org/resources/psychological-first-aid-guide-field-workers).

Hari Dongol – Regarding training for teachers on PFA, during this pandemic we are currently trying on online training for teachers using platforms such as zoom.