School Reopen After Pandemic

     

Introduction

As per the Indian Constitution, access to education is a fundamental right of each child of the country as enshrined in the Right to Education Act (2009). The Government of India supported NDMA in implementation of National School Safety Program launched in 2011 in order to ensure safety of the school and the children. National School Safety policy guidelines released by Government of India in 2016 to make learning environment safer.But it is observed time and again that during any disaster even during concurrent pandemic COVID 19 education of children always hit hard and leading to loss of learning of generation. Education is not only a right, but in situations of emergencies, chronic crises and early reconstruction, it provides physical, psychosocial and cognitive protection, which can be both lifesaving and life-sustaining. But with recurring disasters and also due to some administrative steps like consolidation of school many children either dropout or force to child labour or early marriage, trafficked specially girl child are more vulnerable to such issues which is widely noticed in current pandemic COVID 19.

National School Safety policy guidelines , 2016 is a landmark policy in ensuring safer learning environment for school going kids but that policy is getting very poorly implemented even after Hon’ble Supreme Court order to compliance the NSSPG, 2016. We take simple example of School Disaster Management Plan it is very disturbing to notice that very few SDMPs are made as per the NDMA template on school safety in guidance of Disaster Management experts and many other implementation lacuna if we minutely observe the compliance because somewhere there is missing link in terms of technical knowhow and orientation of official of education sector on importance of education department.

Thus, with initial steps lets start with making SDMP of each school of India as per the template of NDMA in guidance and supervision of Disaster Management expert followed by training and mockdrill in each school for ensuring no lockdown of school in future.