The Minister of Education wants more emergency drills at schools

Minister of Education Torbjørn Roe IsaksenMinister of Education Torbjørn Roe Isaksen .Photo: Terje Bendiksby / NTB scanpix
 The Minister of Education Torbjørn Roe Isaksen  believes Norwegian schools needs to practice more on the ways to respond to unforeseen violence incidents than they do today.
 The Directorate of Education published in February figures for how much Norwegian schools practice the ways to respond to dangerous, violent incidents. Examples of such events may be hostage situations, school shooting, and other ongoing violence.
– We should prepare for what what we call unforeseen violent incidents by practicing the right ways to respond to those, the same way we practice fire drills, says Torbjørn Roe Isaksen to NRK.
On a national basis, 73 percent of the schools in Norway had an emergency drill for this over the last three school years.
 The Education Directorate is also  dissatisfied that the number of schools with emergency drills are so low.
– We definitely need to increase the amount of schools practicing emergency drills. So  we will contact the police and police directorate, the security officer in the Directorate of Education, Norunn Eide said, to the channel.
 The  worst offenders are found among the schools of Southern and Western Norway. In those parts of the country only two out of three schools had practiced emergency drills in the past three years.
Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today