The Government delegate in Asturias, Delia Losa, has chaired a follow-up meeting of the Master Plan for Coexistence and Improvement of Security in Educational Centers and their Environments. The Director of the High Inspection of Education Area of the Government Delegation in Asturias, José Antonio Fernández Espina; the Director General of Educational Inclusion of the Government of the Principality, David Artime: the Delegate of Citizen Participation of Oviedo of the Superior Police Headquarters, Inspector Iris Rodríguez; the Delegate of Citizen Participation of Gijón of the Superior Police Headquarters, Claudio Alperi; and the Coordinator of the Master Plan in the Civil Guard of Asturias, Lieutenant Dan García, have also attended.
This plan of the Ministries of Interior and Education was created by the central government in 2007 and is coordinated by the Government Delegations. This initiative aims to improve the coexistence and safety of schoolchildren and also to increase confidence in the State Security Forces and Corps. The Master Plan is embodied in lectures given by the Civil Guard and the National Police in schools, meetings with security experts and the improvement of surveillance in the school environment. Schools that wish to do so are free to sign up to the plan.
The deadline for registration for this school year ended on October 31. 363 of the 388 educational centers requested to be part of the Master Plan, they are 93.3 percent of the total that exists in Asturias, twenty points more than in the two previous courses, but figure similar to that registered before the Covid-19 pandemic. The most demanded activities were those related to internet risks, with one in four centers interested in them. It is followed in the statistics by bullying or cyberbullying in schools, with 22 percent; nature protection, with 11 percent; violence against women, with 10 percent; road safety, with 9 percent. Last year, 39 National Police and Civil Guard officers gave a total of 1,744 talks.
The main novelty in the call for this course is the publication, by the Secretary of State for Security, of a new instruction on the Master Plan, 6/2023, which replaces the one previously in force in 2013, which represents an important update of the contents of the plan, adapting it to the current security needs of children and adolescents: abuse in the family environment, trafficking and exploitation of human beings, intellectual property rights, violence against the educational community, protection of personal data, road safety and environmental protection.
The Master Plan also offers the educational community - teachers, students, families - the possibility of arranging meetings with the State Security Forces and Corps so that they can provide them with technical assistance and support in these matters:
- General information on security problems that involve greater risk for children and adolescents.
- Prevention mechanisms that can be developed by the educational community to avoid these problems in the school environment and improve the security of the centers.
- Training aimed at acquiring skills for early detection in the face of radicalization and indoctrination processes that lead to violence.
- Collaboration with the educational community, when required, in the face of any type of violence that occurs in the educational centers.
- Individualized assistance to relatives of children and adolescents at risk, either as victims or perpetrators of violent behavior in the school or in the areas in which their personality develops.
In addition, police surveillance and presence activities are carried out in the immediate vicinity of educational centres, aimed not only at detecting situations of drug use and trafficking, but also all kinds of violent or antisocial incidents involving children and adolescents.
The plan includes the promotion by the Directorates-General of the Police and the Civil Guard of other complementary activities aimed at increasing awareness among schoolchildren, such as exhibitions, demonstrations, open days at police stations, calls for competitions, etc.
The High Inspection of Education of the Government Delegation in Asturias last school year prepared a survey on the impact of the Master Plan. The result revealed the high satisfaction of the educational centers, highlighting, above all, the contents of the sessions, the relevance of the topics treated and the interest aroused among the students