School Sector Development Plan is a seven year plan (2016-2023) devised
by Nepal government to ensure equitable access of all to quality of education.
The plan has carried a vision of contributing to the development of
self-sustainable, competitive, innovative and value-oriented citizens for the
socioeconomic transformation of the nation. Addressing the lessons learned from
Gorkha earthquake, the plan has given due emphasis on school based disaster
risk reduction and comprehensive school safety.
Promoting and Strengthening DRR and School Safety project is led by Child
Centered Disaster Risk Reduction (CC-DRR) consortium. The consortium consists
of Save the Children, Plan International Nepal and World Vision as members and
UNICEF as strategic partner. Plan International Nepal is implementing this
project focusing on 30 community and 10 private schools of Baglung district.
This project is funded by European Union Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid
(ECHO).
The project
is supporting Nepal government to meet the goals and objectives of SSDP related
to DRR and school safety i.e. to mainstream DRR and school safety. SSDP's DRR
and School safety objectives are as follows:
·
To ensure all children have access to safe learning
environment.
·
To mainstream CSS and DRR in education sector by
strengthening school level disaster management and resilience among
communities.
To meet aforementioned objectives, the
SSDP has set 10 strategies. The project is in line with these strategies. Three expected outcomes of SSDP, school
facilities resilient to different kind of disasters; strengthened school
disaster management; and institutionalization of risk reduction and resilience
education are in line with three pillars of comprehensive school safety
framework (CSSF), Safe learning facilities; School disaster management, and
Risk reduction and resilience education.
The project supports the schools to
carry out multi hazard risk assessment and risk reduction planning. Then the
schools will incorporate these risk reduction plans in their School Improvement
Plans (SIPs) to ensure effective implementation. The schools prepare education
continuity plans focusing on safe evacuation routes, safe havens, safe family
reunification and child protection in emergency. The project will support
schools in non-structural mitigation activities identified by multi hazard
vulnerability and capacity assessment. These SIPs will be shared with respective
local governments through a series of advocacy interventions for resource
allocation in DRR and school safety activities.
The DRR focal teachers of the
schools are being trained on basic first aid skill and the schools are provided
with basic first aid kit to ensure basic first aid in schools during emergency.
Further, the project also supports the District Education Office in stock
piling of emergency education materials.
To spread important awareness
messages within school and communities, the project will empower and support
child and youth clubs. The teachers have been trained on DRR and School safety.
The trained teachers will teach DRR lessons to the students and encourage to
promote culture of safety and resilience at their homes too. The teachers training
contents on DRR and School Safety have been incorporated within the TPD
package. Similarly, head teachers, resource persons and school supervisors will
be trained to ensure effective leadership, monitoring and evaluation of DRR and
School Safety initiatives at schools.
The project further extends support
in contingency planning, stakeholders mapping, sensitization to schools, and
other activities for ensuring the mainstreaming of DRR and school safety in
ongoing mechanism of education sector.
A minimum school safety package
will be developed containing minimum standards of school safety and school
based DRR in context of Nepalese schools. The project will support schools in
nonstructural mitigation identified after multi hazard vulnerability and
capacity assessment.
In this way, the project focuses on some major components of Pillar 2 and
3 of CSSF. However, it is important to pay attention to all components of all
three pillars of CSSF. Similarly, it is essential to scale up the culture of
school safety to more than 35,000 schools of Nepal. The project is continuously
advocating in this regard and developing IEC materials applicable to people
with disability too. The dissemination of these IEC materials will support to
take these key messages to all Nepal.
