 Safety for all users of the school compound is top priority for the local education sector at the Model Safe School Programme, which is funded by the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency CEDEMA, is designed specifically to enhance the capacity of schools to incorporate and mainstream comprehensive risk and disaster management considerations into education sector policies, planning, and operations. The principal of the Denry Primary School, Cheryl Francis, says the project launched in 2018 has helped the institution tremendously, reducing risk from intruders through the installation of fencing, as well as the placement of fire extinguishers and smoke detectors in strategic locations to guard against fire hazards. We've had situations where things from the secondary school would spill over, disputes spill over to our compound because of the openness our resources have been tampered with. So with the fencing for sure, we know that we have a better leverage in terms of controlling who comes in, what happens on our school compound. So given that we are now closed and we have our caretaker, he is able to filter who comes in, direct them to the office so our children can play in a safer environment and we all can work in a safer environment. Students and the teachers alike now feel confident despite the fact that instruction has been administered mostly online as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The Denry Primary School will remain secure from intruders, human or animal, and the added peace of mind from reinforcements to prevent threats from fires. I feel like it helps children mentally and physically concentrate from school and not get distracted from criminals and uninvited guests outside and focus on their schoolwork. Well for the fire extinguisher, you never know what could happen, especially that the cooks are in the kitchen and anything could go wrong and they could start a fire. So I just want to thank the principal for having the fire extinguisher in the school. Before when the fence was not here, cars would mostly speed to the campus of the school and most likely they would have students running around. In order to address some of the evident vulnerabilities of the education sector, a toolkit was developed by the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency to guide governments of the development of national safe school policies and to offer tools for assessing the level of safety at schools in member states. Teachers tell suffilgents and deniver Paul believe that the children in their care, as well as their colleagues, are more secure because of the SIDIMA input. We are living in a society where we have criminals. We can never tell what people are thinking. But now that it is fenced and it's closed up, that gives us a little assurity that, you know, we are safe to an extent. Having a fire extinguisher at the school helps to keep us safe and it ensures that if perchance on an average day we have a fire, we can just quickly run to the fire extinguisher and deal with the situation. Another component of the model safe schools program is to build resilience into the construction of school plants to ensure that they are able to withstand potential impacts of natural disasters, providing an all-round safe learning environment for all on the school compound. From the Communications Unit of the Ministry of Education, Sustainable Development, Innovation, Science, Technology and Vocational Training, I am Chris Satney reporting.