How safe are our children in school?

Many examples around the world prove that children are more vulnerable to disasters compared to other segments of the population. Disasters have persistent and long-term negative impacts on human development.  They can destroy lives and livelihoods and disrupt/halt the progress made over years of development efforts at a stroke.
Young children are hardest hit and bear a disproportionate share of effects in a disaster. Most of the Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) programmes have so far been largely focused on students at the secondary and high school level and more recently, on the upper grades of primary school.
The children remain a missing link in Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) discourse because of a number of factors. There is evidently an insufficient understanding of the different age groups that constitute early childhood as well as young children's vulnerability and capacities in the face of disaster. Usually children have a tendency to be viewed as the burden and responsibility of families, and not an independent distinct group of the population. It is often assumed, wrongly, that all DRR interventions that target adults and communities are sufficient in and of themselves and that positive effects will automatically trickle down to young children.
The progression of children along the development spectrum can provide useful insights for DRR experts: young children can participate in DRR according to their unfolding capacities and, therefore, DRR activities need to be designed based on their levels of capacity. As Boyden and Mann mentioned, children possess inner resources which when combined with positive interpersonal relationships help to increase their resilience.
The children might be influential and effective communicators on disaster issues between  schools and families. Often, lessons learned at school are later transmitted to family members. Young Tilly Smith is one of the examples, who seeing the receding water before the tsunami could remember her geography lessons on tsunami and was able to save the lives of 100 tourists from a beach in Thailand in December 2004. There are many documented incidents when the safety of a family, or the protection of an important element of the household, has been traced back to a "safety lesson" learned at school. Introducing disaster awareness and risk reduction education in the school curriculum would foster better understanding amongst the children and the teachers. As a result, children would be able to protect themselves from the disaster incidents during school hours. Besides, they would be able to contribute in reducing the risk of their families; eventually contributing towards reducing the risk of the community.
On 14th February, 2013 seven primary school students were killed and 40 others injured at Chaugachha Upazila on Jessore-Meherpur highway as a bus carrying picnickers plunged into a pond at Jhautala on Jessore-Meherpur Highway while they were returning from the picnic spot located in Mujibnagar.  In 2011 a mini truck was carrying a group of Bangladeshi schoolboys celebrating a football victory against another school plunged off a hill road on 10th of July 2011. The assistant of the driver who was driving the truck did not have a license. The accident occurred at Mirersharai, near the port of Chittagong. The survivors later told reporters at the hospital that the children were in a happy mood, singing and dancing, while the bus crashed down 50 feet into a flooded ditch and killed at least 53 students. 53 dead bodies had been recovered and another 15 injured were taken to hospital, including 10 in critical condition. In all the newspapers in the country a question was raised, "why the owner of the truck allowed an unskilled driver to drive?" But the issue was soon ignored; it still remains unknown 'why the school authority hired a mini truck for carrying the students'.
The initiatives taken by the Government of Bangladesh to minimise the disaster risk pertaining to schools and children are to be discussed here. Physical strengthening of school buildings in the coastal and flood prone areas which is being used by the school and community at large as a shelter is one such initiative towards mitigating the disaster impact. As the National Plan on Disaster Management proposes the national level school safety programme, this requires considering and linking with the infrastructure development programmes in education sector so that both policies and programmes at national level from disaster management and education merge together. But still a question may remain unresolved on "Education in Emergency". If the school buildings are used as shelters, how would the school authority continue classes in those buildings? This integration will trickle down to the school level by ensuring both children's right to education and disaster risk reduction.
The national plan for disaster management (2010-2015) also approves to include disaster risk reduction perspectives into primary, secondary and tertiary levels educations by developing and implementing school safety plan that includes national school safety plan and school building level emergency response plans. There is a link in it which describes the vision of the Government of Bangladesh to reduce the disaster risk by promoting children's right to education. This also provides a rationale to explore the comprehensive framework for school safety which is a broader scope than school safety plan and preparedness.
We know that the Facilities Department and Local Government and Engineering Department (LGED) are responsible for the construction and infrastructure development of the schools. These institutions can play very crucial role in building the external environment around the school by ensuring safer construction and bare minimum infrastructure as per hazard and geographical areas. At this moment, there is very little coordination among directorate of primary and secondary education offices at the district level, district disaster management committee, facilities department and LGED to merge the two parallel issues of children's right to education and disaster risk reduction.
The damage of school infrastructure and properties is the concrete evidence to the above argument where disasters are continuously hitting hard specially in  flood plain and coastal areas, besides the day to day potential threats due to human hazards to schools in the urban areas. Authorities at the local level need to integrate their vision and mandate to ensure children's safety through disaster risk reduction.
From the all available information and data i.e. meteorological changes, gradual increase of soil erosion and migration/sheltering in unsafe land of poor people, it can be predicted that frequency, intensity and severity of flood would be increased in Bangladesh in future. Adhoc development in all sectors including education is making the community not only disastrous to live but also weakening their coping capacities to withstand natural or human-induced disasters. Development and disasters are two sides of the same coin which could destroy the other unless both are tackled in an integrated way. In such situation, governments are under great pressure and face huge challenge to continue providing basic services such as education during and aftermath of the disaster. There is no doubt that disaster always interrupts the continued education process and future development, depending upon the time-span to recover and get back to the pre-disaster status.
Apart from natural hazards, human induced hazards have become equally dangerous for the schools due to their location and congestion. It is indeed that all the disasters affect the whole community. But the rich people, in general are not affected by the natural calamity; if they are affected hardly ever, they can recover their losses personally or by using the social and state power. But if a devastating incident i.e. fire, earthquake or building collapse would occur in any school, question of 'rich', 'middle-class' or 'poor' would be an ignored issue in terms of loss of lives.  Many schools in city area are located in old buildings. Minor kids are staying for a big time in those buildings. Students, even the teachers of these schools are not aware of fire safety. None has an emergency fire plan to evacuate children in an orderly manner in case of a fire. The annual number of injury related child deaths has gone up to 30,000 and the number of permanent disabilities caused by injuries is more than 13,000 every year (Bangladesh Health and Injury Survey 2005). These figures may or may not be indicative only for children who do not attend school. Also, children spend more or less six to seven hours in schools and the chances of facing road accidents or injury becomes 30 per cent.   
The political commitment of government to improve the safety situation of education sector is in progress. Schools cum shelter have become the concrete image at the community level coping with floods or cyclone. But Bangladesh is yet to reach a milestone by bringing school safety concerns into policy framework, legislation and practice.
The school safety act in Iran came after the major earthquake struck in 2005, where more than 10,000 students died because of school building collapse. More than 1000 teachers died and around 80 per cent of the school buildings were completely destroyed. To understand the gravity of the problem which was not the earthquake but the lack of safety culture, the Government of Iran took major initiatives to minimise the impact of disaster. Sri Lankan government took a decisive step towards disaster management and considered education sector immediately after Tsunami struck in 2004.
Disaster Management Act in Bangladesh came into existence with the Road Map suggesting all sectors to include disaster risk reduction into the plan and programmes. Schools are being engaged to mobilize students, teachers and staff and relevant agencies and officials to develop the culture of safety. Curriculum development, to enhance pedagogy-teacher's training, awareness raising on disaster risk reduction have now become mandatory for the education sector to work in partnership closely with Disaster Management Ministry. Some international and local NGOs are practicing school safety programmes with the financial support of European Commission.  Awareness raising campaign was conducted among the school students, teachers and the members of the school management committees. Besides, school risk assessment was done and Risk Reduction Plan was developed basing on the risk assessment. Simulation drill was also conducted under the programme. Unfortunately, it was observed that after phasing out of the programme the school authorities didn't carry forward those interventions spontaneously. Based on the lessons learned, recently an NGO consortium namely 'DeSHARI' led by Save the Children has taken initiative to assist the education departments (primary and secondary) in developing the concerned guidebook by which school safety issues can be addressed.     
The writer is working as free-lance consultant on disaster management, climate change and adaptation,
email: [email protected]