BY HARRIET CHIKANDIWA THE Zimbabwe Red Cross Society (ZRCS) and the Primary and Secondary Education ministry have partnered to ensure the safety of learners in times of natural disasters.
ZRCS secretary-general Elias Hwenga said the project also sought to ensure learning was not disrupted during emergencies.
“Further to ensuring that schools are capacitated to provide basic disaster response, they were also capacitated with disaster emergency kits as well as first aid kits,” Hwenga said at the launch on Monday.
“ZRCS, working in close collaboration with the Ministry of Education’s department of curriculum development, compiled the ZRCS school safety approach document for future reference and to inform replication elsewhere within Zimbabwe.”
Education ministry representative Learnson Tagara said a comprehensive school safety framework was necessary to reduce the risks of natural disasters to the education sector.
“The model shall be based on the three core pillars of the comprehensive school safety framework, safe learning facilities, school disaster management, and risk reduction and resilience education — adapted to the Zimbabwean context and guided mostly by the implementation experience through the disaster response management programme,” Tagara said.
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“This model shall have a similar purpose to the comprehensive school model by the United Nations, but contextualised to the Primary and Secondary Education ministry’s thrust to provide a safe learning environment in its mandate to improve access to quality and inclusive education,” he added.
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