Ten years after 276 schoolgirls were abducted from the Government Senior Secondary School, Chibok, northeast Nigeria, UNICEF is working with government, communities, teachers and children to make schools safe.
There are two special bells at the Njiwaji Primary School, Damaturu, northeast Nigeria. While one initiates the convocation of the morning and afternoon assemblies, the other bell, with its less jarring sound, signals break time and change of classes.
The two bells sit in the headmaster office alongside a special whistle that had never been used in the history of the 50-year-old school.
That’s the whistle we received during a special training on Conflict and Disaster Risk Reduction conducted by UNICEF. I am one of the 40 teachers who participated from this school, says Mohammad Usman, Computer Studies teacher
It is a whistle that keeps children safe in the event of any emergency. The children know the sound and once it is blown, a set of measures are quickly activated by teachers to move students to safety, he adds.
Mohammad who started his teaching career in 2004 says he has not attended any child protection training before.
The UNICEF-supported trainings, conducted with funding from the Partnership for Learning for All (PLANE) programme of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) improved the capacity of 400 teachers in Damaturu on gender-based violence, psychosocial support, conflict and disaster risk reduction (CDRR) and child protection.
Fourteen years after armed conflict broke out in northeast Nigeria, the region is still an unsafe zone for children. School attacks, abductions as well as the recruitment and use of children by armed group remain a sad feature of the protracted conflict.
The purpose of the child protection trainings is to ensure that holistic security and safety measures are available in schools to protect students and teachers alike.
The psychosocial support training particularly holds a special place in Mohammad’s heart. According to him, a set of activities practiced during the training has equipped him with the skills to support children with trauma.
The training has exposed me to identifying symptoms of psychosocial distress in children. A child can be withdrawn or finds it difficult to concentrate in class. Some children have even lost interest in learning. As a teacher, I need to sit with that child side by side to find out what the problem is. If the issue is beyond what I can handle, I have to refer that student to the headteacher and if he or she cannot also address it, the student will be referred to the School-based Management Committee, adds Mohammad.
And though the school has never used the emergency whistle, the Computer Science teacher says children would be well protected in case of an emergency.
It could be a fire or active shooter emergency; the measures are still the same. We have identified assembly points around the school and emergency exits to keep everyone safe. What is also important is calmness. The teacher must be calm throughout because panicking will worsen the situation. We must model calmness to the students, he adds.
