Safety in the educational environment: educators and government officials agree on joint work
On August 25, in Kyiv, the first “Forum of specialists in security in the educational environment” took place. The event was organized by the Ministry of Internal Affairs with the support of the UNICEF Children's Fund in Ukraine.
The forum brought together more than a hundred participants who are concerned with the safety of educational institutions. Among them are representatives of central and local authorities, representatives of youth prevention of the National Police of Ukraine and specialists of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine, school directors and directly security specialists.
Participants of the event discussed current challenges and solutions, strategies and concepts of further cooperation in the issue of creating a safe educational environment.
The day before, another 30 specialists in security in the educational environment completed their training. According to the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Kateryna Pavlichenko, each of them should be a significant reinforcement for communities.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine together with UNICEF has already prepared about 120 specialists in total. Of these, 85% already work in communities with educational institutions.
“Given yesterday's release, we will be able to cover a total of 330 educational institutions in 110 communities. But we realize that within Ukraine this is not enough. Nevertheless, these specialists should become the engine of security competence for participants in the educational process,” the deputy head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs noted.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs, together with other authorities, is building a new model of security in education.
According to the Deputy Minister, aware of the challenges that change every day, the Ministry of Internal Affairs increases the potential of communities. And a security professional should be one of the components of this potential.
In addition, during her speech, Ekaterina Pavlichenko outlined the main danger factors for students. Among them there are steel factors, and there are those that arose in connection with a full-scale war:
- Rocket and artillery shelling
- Pollution of the territory with explosive objects
- Increase in the number of weapons
- Psycho-emotional tension
- Buling
- Domestic violence
- Bad habits
- Fires
- Danger on the road
- Cyberdanger
Therefore, during the joint work at the forum, specialists from different fields of activity discussed options for confronting these factors.
During the first panel discussion, Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation for European Integration Valeria Ionan spoke. She presented the platform “Action. Education” and told how to protect children from danger on the Internet. Daria Gerasimchuk, Counsellor and Commissioner of the President of Ukraine on Children's Rights and Child Rehabilitation, also had the floor. She conducted a survey of the participants of the forum and emphasized the importance of everyone's work, because the future of our state depends on the safety of children today.
In addition, with the direct participation of representatives of the State Emergency Service and NPU within the framework of the project “Specialist on safety in the educational environment”, the prevention and elimination of negative phenomena and their harmful consequences for the safety of students were discussed.
The participants of the forum noted the shortcomings in the legislation related to the safety of schoolchildren, emphasized that large educational institutions need a deputy director of the school for safety in the educational environment. To do this, you need to create new jobs. Representatives of educational institutions added that there is no shortage of materials for training, so they reached an agreement with rescuers about collective work in this direction.
At the end of the forum, invited guests worked in groups. During the communication, existing security problems in the educational environment were announced and collectively proposed solutions to each of the issues voiced. All - reached joint decisions and based on the results of the discussions drew conclusions and guidelines for further work.
Department of Communications of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine
