Tripartite agreement signed to implement Nagaland Disaster Management School Safety Policy

KOHIMA— Towards effective implementation of the Nagaland Disaster Management School Safety Policy (NDMSSP), the Nagaland State Disaster Management Authority, Department of School Education, and NagaED signed a tripartite 'service-level agreement' at Civil Secretariat, Kohima, on Friday.

The signatories of the service-level agreement were Commissioner and Secretary (NSDMA), Lhouchalie Viya; Commissioner and Secretary of School Education, Kevileno Angami; and Operations Manager of NagaED, Marina Dzuvichu.

The school safety policy is supposed to be implemented in every school as mandated in the National Disaster Management Authority guidelines, and in line with the mandate, Nagaland also developed the policy a few years ago but faced challenges in implementing, said Joint Chief Executive Officer, NSDMA, Johnny Ruangme.

Since training the teachers physically was not possible, the department was looking for alternatives to reach out to them to implement the policy effectively on the ground, when the NagaED stepped in to work out modules for online mode training, he asaid.

Kevileno Angami informed that there are some 30,000 teachers serving in both private and government schools and four lakh students in Nagaland.

She expressed hope that the training will help the teachers and children better prepared for disasters.

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Principal Director of School Education, Thavaseelan K said the target was to train teachers from 758 private schools and 1939 government schools and that the new safety policy would help enhance the existing safety measures in schools.

Assistant Manager (Training and Education) NSDMA, Khrolou Koza Lohe, said that ensuring all the schools in the state to comply with the policy is a challenge; the only way out is to digitise the School Safety Policy to overcome the challenges and make it accessible even to schools in remote areas.

Once the training modules are ready, which are expected to be done by November, a total of 4000 government and 1000 private teachers across the state will be trained in the first phase.

The primary goals include training teachers on the subject of disaster management through online mode, formulating their own individual school safety plans and providing a safer working place for both faculty and students in response to disaster through disaster preparedness measures, she said.

NagaEd, a digital education provider, will design and develop the digital compliance module. It will provide technical support and roll out of the digital module and also provide training on how to use the platform. The online portal is expected to be completed by November and its inauguration slated for December 1 (Nagaland Statehood Day). This will be followed by training of teachers in the same month.

The NSDMA will finance the course and act as the facilitator and interlocutor while the Department of School Education will provide lists of teachers for training and enforce such participants for a certificate course.

The School Education department will also issue orders and notifications specifying the level of teachers who would undertake the online training course.