Flash floods, fires and floods: this is how Education will prepare 36,244 students for an emergency

PalmaStudents in the sixth year of Infant Education, sixth year of Primary Education, and fourth year of ESO in the Balearic Islands will receive specific training this academic year on how to act in emergency situations. The Government will roll out the Education X Emergencies program to all educational centers supported by public funds, with a forecast of reaching 36,244 students and providing a total of 3,624 hours of training during the 2026-2027 academic year. The Minister of Education and Universities, Antoni Vera, and the Second Vice President and Minister of Presidency, Coordination of Government Action and Local Cooperation, Antònia Maria Estarellas, presented the initiative this Monday at the IES Emili Darder in Palma. The program is a joint effort between the Directorate General for Emergencies and Interior and the Ministry of Education and Universities.

By island, the training will reach 29,072 students in Mallorca, 2,763 in Menorca, 4,142 in Ibiza, and 267 in Formentera. Fourth-year ESO students will receive four hours of training distributed throughout the course, while those in Infant and Primary education will receive two. The sessions will be taught jointly by members of security and emergency forces and by teachers who have completed the program's specific training. The contents will be adapted to the students' age and presented through videos, infographics, and other audiovisual materials.

The program will address how to act in the event of floods, forest fires, adverse meteorological phenomena, and technological risks, such as industrial or chemical accidents or those related to the transport of dangerous goods. Alert and emergency systems, the identification of risk situations, and prevention and self-protection measures will also be explained. Among the risks that will be addressed, there will be some especially linked to the Balearic Islands, such as flash floods.

More than 1,100 people trained

The deployment in the centers comes after the specific training of the teaching staff who will participate in it. According to the Government, 1,116 people have already completed the content through the training platform of the Ministry of Education, Vocational Training and Sports: 907 teachers and 209 emergency professionals. On November 10, a third training session will be held for teachers who have shown interest in participating in the program but were unable to attend either of the two previous sessions. This session will complete the preparation of the teaching staff who will participate in the deployment of the program during this school year. Education X Emergencies follows a similar structure to other initiatives of the Institute of Public Safety of the Balearic Islands (ISPIB), such as Police Tutor, Safe Parties and Road Safety. The participating teaching staff will be able to obtain a diploma recognized by the Government, in addition to course and permanence badges, while the centers will receive an accreditation seal.

The program is being deployed in parallel with the new action protocol for emergencies and adverse weather phenomena in educational centers, presented by Vera and Estarellas at the beginning of the summer. The document establishes the actions that management teams, teaching staff and administration and service personnel must carry out in risk situations, with measures related to the organization of students in safe spaces, evacuations, control of center exits, cutting off supplies and coordination with families and emergency services. The Government thus replaces the previous informative document with a tool that aims to function as an operational protocol for emergencies and adverse weather phenomena.