The Department of Education (DepEd) is moving away from simulating armed attacks in school safety drills, saying exercises should prepare students and teachers to respond to emergencies without unnecessarily exposing them to distressing scenarios.

DepEd Undersecretary Malcolm Garma said the department removed the “active attacker” scenario from its nationwide school safety drill on Thursday and instead used a distinct alarm as the signal for schools to activate their emergency response protocols.

“We no longer included the scenario that there is an actual attacker. We don’t want to use the word ‘attack,’ so we used school safety,” Garma told reporters during the drill.

Garma said the exercise was designed to determine whether schools knew what to do once an emergency occurred, including how to call for police assistance, evacuate or secure learners and coordinate with medical responders.

“What is important is to see how prepared the school is and whether they know what to do in case of these incidents,” he said.

The alarm used in Thursday’s drill was deliberately different from those used for fire or earthquake exercises, Garma said, so that schools could establish a clear signal for the type of emergency being tested.

The drill also tested schools’ ability to summon police assistance. Garma said participants could use the government’s unified 911 system, which he said would connect calls to the nearest police station.

At the school level, the exercise also sought to address the fear generated by recent violence.

Roy Oliver G. Pama, a school disaster risk reduction and management coordinator, said news of the shootings had unsettled him as an educator.

“As a teacher, when I heard about what happened in Zamboanga and Tacloban, of course I was agitated and scared,” Pama said.

He said the drill could help schools confront that fear by giving teachers and learners a clearer understanding of how to respond.

“This is another step to reduce that fear and, of course, to prepare the schools,” Pama said.

Garma said DepEd was also consulting psychological and psychiatric experts as it further develops its protocols, with the aim of making future exercises holistic, child-friendly and protective of learners.

The department would draw on research and expertise from Philippine specialists rather than simply replicate protocols from other countries, he said.

“Our country has a different context. We gather this information, our research, through our experts here in the Philippines,” Garma said.

DepEd may hold another school safety drill before the end of the year after further refining the protocols, Garma said.###