A total of 765 students from the Canary Islands have received training in emergencies during the last academic year 2024/2025, within the framework of the Master Plan for Coexistence and Improvement of Security in Educational Centers and their Environments of the Secretary of State for Security, coordinated by the Delegation of the Government in the Canary Islands.

Aimed at educational levels ranging from Primary Education to Vocational Training, 49 informative talks have been held in the Archipelago in 21 educational centers in the islands of Gran Canaria, Tenerife, El Hierro and Lanzarote.

The objective of these sessions has been to improve the knowledge, skills and attitudes of children and adolescents about risks likely to generate emergency situations, such as forest fires, floods and earthquakes.

Under the title of ‘Civil Protection: Risks and emergencies in the educational center and its environments, the importance of prevention and self-protection’, the training has been taught by the facilitators who are the volunteers themselves, members of the REMER or the local, island, autonomous and state Civil Protection and Emergency services, who have been trained in the National School of Civil Protection to transmit this knowledge through an active and participatory methodology with the youth population.

The talks have been coordinated by the Civil Protection Unit and the Functional Area of High Inspection of Education of the Government Delegation in the Canary Islands, with the collaboration of the General Directorate of Emergencies of the Government of the Canary Islands that has participated in all phases of the program: from the training of facilitators and contact with educational centers to promote their dissemination and implementation to the active participation of the technical staff of that General Directorate in the teaching of the sessions.

Compulsory training from the next course

This training action has been available to schools in the Canary Islands that have requested it, as a step prior to the mandatory implementation of this training from the next academic year 2025-2026.

The Sectoral Conference on Education, chaired by the Minister of Education, Vocational Training and Sports, Pilar Alegría, approved on June 12 the Emergency Training Plan, developed in collaboration with the Ministry of the Interior through Civil Protection. This plan will begin to be implemented next year and will be mandatory in all educational centers in the country with the aim of spreading the culture of prevention and ensuring the adequate training of the entire educational community in the response to any type of civil protection emergency.

Students will receive training on how to deal with specific risks such as floods, earthquakes, tsunamis and tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, adverse weather events, forest fires and industrial, chemical, nuclear and dangerous goods transport accidents.