Safety management in Catalonia’s schools

Disasters can have severe consequences on their education, with inadequate school facilities at risk of damage during disasters and armed conflicts also posing a threat to students. In addition to immediate impacts like death and injury, disasters can lead to long-term psychosocial issues and educational setbacks for children and youth, including increased drop-out rates and reduced academic performance.In the early 2000s, there were various efforts to promote school safety and address risks in education. UNICEF launched the Safe Schools Initiative in Nigeria and the Child-Friendly Schools framework to improve education quality for all children. The INEE created standards for safe learning environments during crises, and the WISS initiative involving 50 countries was launched in 2014. The GCPEA worked on monitoring and reporting attacks on schools, and 95 governments have signed the Safe Schools Declaration to protect schools during armed conflicts.The concept of school safety was unclear in the 2000s, leading to collaboration from various fields to create a framework for assessing school safety in all hazards. This Comprehensive School Safety (CSS) Framework was developed through grassroots efforts, studies, and dialogue, bringing together different perspectives. The formal CSS Framework was introduced in 2012 and endorsed by organizations advocating for disaster risk reduction in education in 2015 through the Global Alliance for Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience in the Education Sector.The article presents findings from the initial CSS Baseline Survey of national policies in 2017. It was conducted using the globally recognized CSS framework, which provided clear targets and indicators for structuring survey questions. The survey covered 68 countries across Asia-Pacific, Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) regions, highlighting both widespread adoption and areas where CSS policy implementation is lagging.The survey included 29 questions about national policies related to disaster management in schools, covering areas such as school safety, disaster response procedures, and risk reduction education. Save the Children focused on countries in Africa, the LAC region, and Asia-Pacific with high disaster risk rankings and existing relationships with the government.The authors used a mixed-method approach to analyze the CSS core set data using SPSS. Most of the survey questions were nominal, but some were ordinal, which helped quantify the «dimensionality» of the policies. The authors calculated average percentages of CSS policies by region and globally.The authors conducted the analysis by induction and extracted major themes from the data, allowing the research findings to emerge from frequently occurring, dominant or significant themes inherent in the raw data, without the constraints of structured methods. This approach also allows for reviewing, 'mapping' or summarizing different pieces of evidence to identify the breadth and depth of the field.The survey looked at 15 variables that help in developing policies and 20 variables that hinder policy development. Respondents chose the variables relevant to their country. Some countries did not answer this part of the survey and were not included in the analysis. The variables were grouped into facilitative themes and impeditive themes. Seven independent variables were used in regression models to analyze the data. The variables included the number of facilitators and blockers in different themes, region, and gross national income per capita. Multicollinearity was not found among the independent variables. Different regression techniques were used based on the type of dependent indicator variables.Regression analysis showed that regional differences and economic status were associated with measures to strengthen weak school institutions, but not with the presence of most other policies based on common learning standards. These results help to identify the contexts in which the development of policies to create resilient schools may be most successful, as well as an action plan to continue risk reduction in the education sector.ConclusionThe study of articles on school safety revealed a number of important aspects concerning the safety of students in educational institutions. The key recommendations that emerged from the analysis of the articles are the need to strengthen control and monitoring of students' behavior, to conduct preventive work among students and their parents, and to raise awareness of educators about conflict prevention methods. Maintaining a safe educational environment is a public task, the solution of which requires the efforts of all participants of the educational process.References1.Li S. J., Wu C. S. T., Wong H. T. School safety and children health in a post-disaster community: Implications to collaborative care and service learning in school health //Journal of Acute Disease. – 2016. – Т. 5. – №. 1. – С. 46-50.2. Maunder R. E., Crafter S. School bullying from a sociocultural perspective //Aggression and violent behavior. – 2018. – Т. 38. – С. 13-20.3. Ozmen F., Dur C., Akgul T. School security problems and the ways of tackling them //Procedia-social and behavioral sciences. – 2010. – Т. 2. – №. 2. – С. 5377-5383.4. 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