Official Statement on Safe Schools Delivered by Assistant Secretary Reynaldo D. Laguda Philippine Department of Education March 14. 2015 Sendai On behalf of the Filipino people, I would like to express our sincerest gratitude to the different nations and partners who have extended their support after Typhoon Haiyan and continue to do so until today. Your compassion and solidarity with our people during that very challenging period has contributed much to our resilience and taught us that we are not alone—that we belong to a bigger community that values the safety and security as much as we do. The Philippines, through the Department of Education recognizes that schools are at the heart of our communities, therefore we commit to keep our schools safe from threats, be they human-­‐induced or natural. As an organization with around 47,000 schools under our belt, we are mandated to provide conditions where “students learn in a child-­‐friendly, gender-­‐sensitive, safe and motivating environment.” Our size and the scope of our responsibility pose a real challenge but it is nothing we cannot overcome. We have adopted a unified national framework that incorporates the Comprehensive School Safety framework with the four themes of prevention, preparedness, response, & rehabilitation and recovery (see slide). This framework guides education planning and supervision of our public schools and offices all over the country and ensures that DRR/CCA and education outcomes complement each other. Building back better includes building back the lives of our learners, parents, teachers and administrative staff. We firmly believe that in committing to safe schools we should highlight three important points: 1. Infrastructure-­‐related interventions should always be done in tandem with other initiatives. The Department of Education recently created an office dedicated to focusing on building DRRM in the education sector. We are strengthening our DRR curriculum integration with extra-­‐
curricular activities such as student-­‐led risk identification, promoting scouting and other student organizations to teach life skills, and the regular conduct of drills. We are formalizing and rolling out psychosocial support for students in dealing with disasters and crises. We are harvesting and increasing access to DRR education resources for teachers via offline and online modalities. Information management systems have been substantially improved for early warning, rapid damage assessment, recovery monitoring and inter-­‐agency collaboration. We have adopted a comprehensive child protection policy that enshrines the universal rights of the child and condemns any form of threat against children in schools. 2. Partnerships, engagement and linkages are critical to our success. Groups like World Vision, Save the Children, Unicef, Red Cross, Plan International, to name a few, act locally in supporting our school development plans. The agility of private sector in responding is important as we rebuild schools. Our 11 year-­‐old Brigada Eskwela (School Brigade) campaign draws out thousands of partners and volunteers nationwide in preparing our schools and thereby making it safer for children prior to the start of every school year. An inter-­‐agency policy on camp management that stresses the importance of immediately restoring education services as a necessary element to recovery. 3. Finally, when we talk about safe schools, we return to the context of our communities. No school can be safe without the involvement of its host community. No community is safe if its schools are not safe. School development plans now require the participation of local governments and community stakeholders. Our school-­‐based vegetable gardens and feeding programs would not be successful without the clear support and participation of parents. We aspire for students having the capacity to save themselves and be equipped with knowledge, skills and an orientation of preparedness that they can share with their families and their immediate community. Ultimately, if students indeed develop the competencies and values that allow them to realize their full potential, then they are better positioned to contribute meaningfully to building our nation and society. Truly, education helps achieve DRR outcomes and conversely, DRR helps achieve our education outcomes of access, quality and governance.