VIJAYAWADA: State HRD Minister, Ganta Srinivasa Rao, launched the book, Comprehensive School Safety, which would be part of the curriculum of government and private schools of the State, at an event held at the Jyothi Convention Centre, here in the city on Tuesday. The minister lauded the education department’s initiative to integrate safety and protection of the children, along with awareness on disaster management, which includes ‘disaster risk reduction’ in the school education system. He also released the Teachers’ Reference Book, which would help teachers teach students the new subject.
Stating that the State government was the first in the country to come up with disaster management curriculum at school stage, the minister said, “The state would stand as a model to rest of the country in implementation of this curriculum”.The Department of School Education and the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT), Andhra Pradesh, in technical collaboration with Save the Children and support from NOKIA, developed ‘India’s first’ comprehensive school safety curriculum for Andhra Pradesh in Telugu Language.
Addressing the gathering, the minister said, “Since 2017, we wanted to make this part of the school curriculum and we are proud that we are first in the country to be disaster-ready with special school safety curriculum. The prime responsibility of the government is to safeguard the children from each and every disturbance. As part of the safety measures we have come with this new subject to make the students resilient and act quick to take safety measures. The subject is very deep and cover every required detail of the children - right from disasters to child abuse”.
The Classes from III to X would have a separate lesson on disaster management from the coming academic year. The new topic will be added to the Environmental Science (EVS) subject and the programme would be 70 percent activity-based and 30 percent theory-based. He said that the State government was the first in the country to come up with disaster management curriculum at school stage.
The new curriculum would soon be implemented in all schools of the State, including the private and the government ones.