Philippines holds first active shooter drills after school shooting killed three
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The Philippines has begun holding active school shooter drills after two teenage students opened fire in Tacloban City in June, killing three schoolmates.
PHOTO: AFP
- The Philippines has started active shooter drills in schools after a June shooting in Tacloban killed three students and injured 20 others.
- Education Secretary Sonny Angara said drills will expand nationwide to prepare for rising violence linked to social media and terrorist recruitment.
- Teachers and groups urge focusing on prevention to keep schools safe, warning drills show the need to address root causes of insecurity.
AI generated
MANILA – The Philippines has begun holding active school shooter drills after a rare act of violence in Tacloban City in June during which two teenage students opened fire, killing three schoolmates and injuring 20 others.
On July 15, at one educational campus in Manila, hundreds of students and teachers practised barricading classrooms with desks and chairs and staying silent as an armed actor wearing a black hoodie scoured the halls and rooms.
“We acknowledge the increasing number of violent incidents because of exposure to damaging social media sites, wrong influences and terrorist groups online actively recruiting,” Education Secretary Sonny Angara told reporters.
“We really have to be very creative and adjust to the new activities of perpetrators,” he said, adding that such exercises will be replicated in public schools across the country.
June’s fatal shooting at a high school in the central Visayas region shocked the nation of 113 million, where school shootings and mass violence in educational settings is exceedingly uncommon.
Although the Philippines has strict gun ownership laws, weak enforcement has made it increasingly easy for people to get access to weapons.
In the Tacloban incident, police said the suspects, aged 14 and 15, allegedly stole the handguns from their relatives.
“It’s important to prepare students in case there’s really an active shooter,” said Julie Anne Ramirez, a teacher at Manila Science High School, where the drills were launched on July 15. “Before, we didn’t consider it as part of emergencies.”
One Grade 12 student, Josephine Mikaela Segarra, said she at least felt more secure knowing that the authorities are thinking of their safety.
While the rarity of school shootings in South-east Asia stands in sharp contrast to the US, which has recorded hundreds of firearm incidents on school grounds over the past decade, other nations in the region are also getting more prepared.
Thailand began holding active shooter drills after a 2022 mass shooting at a nursery in rural Nong Bua Lamphu province, where an ex-policeman killed 36 people, mainly children, with guns and a knife.
Although equipping students, teachers and school personnel with skills to respond during emergencies can save lives, the authorities should focus on preventive measures, the Alliance of Concerned Teachers-Philippines said in a statement on Facebook last week.
“Schools must remain genuine zones of peace and safety and not places where active shooter drills become a regular necessity because the conditions that breed insecurity remain unaddressed,” the group said. BLOOMBERG
