Abstract

This toolkit is aimed at helping the process of making a school more resilient and responsive. Although aimed at better preparedness for education in emergencies, it has been prepared with the basic premise that only if a school or school-system is resilient in its functioning during ‘normal’ times will it become capable of responding quickly and comprehensively in an emergency. An average school serving children coming from marginalised communities, families, and locations faces challenges that it needs to respond to, on a fairly regular basis. Quite often, these challenges remain unrecognised and unaddressed, affecting the functioning of the school and children’s learning. If a school is made capable of acting in such situations, it means the school has signs of resilience.

This toolkit is primarily based on the experiences of Bihar Mentorship Project (BMP) study by CBPS but also draws heavily from other experiences of the Education in Emergency (EiE) project. Each chapter can be used independently, or the entire set of chapters can be used together. This toolkit contains activities and questions for reflection that are tools that can be used/adapted for either self-learning or for conducting training workshops. In case of self-learning, it can be used both by individuals groups. For instance, if a school with seven teachers want to use this toolkit for their own capacity building, it is possible to do so. Certain activities are more amenable for individual reflection, while others are more suitable for group work. However, most activities/questions can be easily adapted for either individual or group use depending on the objective it is being used for.

Jha, J., Menon, G., Ghatak N., & Menon, N. (2022). Building resilient school systems for comprehensive response to education in emergencies: a comprehensive toolkit. Bengaluru: Centre for Budget and Policy Studies.