More safety education classrooms in city by year end

Chen Huizhi / SHINE

Seventy-three new classrooms for safety education will be open in 68 schools in Pudong New Area by the end of November this year, the education authority said on Friday.

By the end of next year, such classrooms will be found in all 234 public elementary and junior middle schools in the new area, according to the plan of the authority.

The classrooms are equipped with interactive tech equipment to help students learn safety knowledge and skills in firefighting, medical first-aid, earthquake escape and riding a bike on the street.

Yan Fuping, assistant director of safety affairs administration center of Pudong education bureau, said so far there are eight major providers of the equipment in Pudong schools.

The city’s education commission announced in 2015 that safety education classrooms will equip all public primary and junior middle schools by the end of 2020.

Yan said a recent citywide mid-term review of the progress of the project pointed out that safety education courses and teachers are still a deficit.

Wang Jianying, a teacher with about 20 years of experience in safety education who now works at Xinyuntai Middle School in Pudong, agreed to that.

At this middle school, all eighth-graders are required to take the safety education class once a week, but many schools in Shanghai don’t make it a compulsory class for their students, and teachers assigned to teach the subject are not fully competent, Wang said.

“Sporadic lectures on safety education don’t work as well as weekly classes, and it takes skillful teachers to well organize safety education classes and prevent them from going out of control as such classes involve a lot of activities,” she said.

In Pudong, schools increasingly engage fire brigades and communities to hold safety education events which benefit both students and residents.