Curbing Tragedies: School Safety Measures in NRW
Addressing School Safety: Lack of Expert Resources
Current Hour . 11.06.2025. 39:52 . . Available until 11.06.2027. Check our website. By Sebastian Auer.
Status: 11.06.2025, 17:44
School shootings, a chilling reality for many, often originate from youth in psychological turmoil. Yet, a scarcity of specialized personnel in preventive measures persists.
Following another school shooting in Graz, Austria, with eleven fatalities, including the suspected assailant, let's delve into how schools in NRW secure themselves against such horrific events.
- Graz Amoklauf - the known facts | tagesschau
"Avoid concreting schools": Interior Minister Reul
School shootings are uncommon in this country. Since 2000, there have been 15 such incidents nationwide, five of which occurred in NRW. According to NRW's Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU), police in NRW are primed for school shootings. Each patrol car is armed with bulletproof vests and machine guns.
"Avoid treating," Reul stated. Instead, the focus should be on:
Emergency Handbook: Guidelines for Action
For emergency situations, NRW schools have an "Emergency Handbook" available to all principals. This comprehensive guide outlines detailed steps for teachers to take in case of an emergency alert.
The handbook also comprises a public-accessible crisis prevention section. It discusses potential warning signs that indicate a student may be heading towards a crisis that could culminate in violence against others.
Crisis Squad: A Recommendation in NRW
Warning signs can comprise expressions of revenge fantasies, specific threats to harm someone, and suicidal inclinations, explains Darmstadt's criminal psychologist Karoline Roshdi, as reported by our website. Combined with despair and hopelessness, any plans to acquire a weapon should be taken extremely seriously.
Ideally, every school should have a dedicated crisis squad, says Roshdi. The concept was developed following the school shooting in Erfurt. Although some federal states have made this team mandatory, such as Bavaria and Hamburg, in NRW, it is merely a recommendation.
Additionally, the Ministry of Education has announced a new "Guideline for dealing with acts of violence" for NRW schools. This guideline may serve as a template for schools' violence prevention concepts.
Warning Signs on a Piece of Paper
In many schools, the crisis squad consists merely of a roster with names of teachers tasked with emergency response duty. Ideally, however, they are active members, trained to identify, deescalate conflicts, and serve as trusted points of contact for students.
Teachers cannot tackle this mission alone, says Roshdi. Collaboration from mental health professionals and the police is crucial.
So, experts like Roshdi, who have researched school shootings extensively and authored a book on the topic, emphasize the necessity of trained teams to detect potential threats and offer support to those in crisis. Retrospection reveals that there were often warning signs before the shooter even arrived at school, especially through social media interactions between students. Nevertheless, these signs do not always escalate into a dangerous situation.
A positive school environment is key to preventing potential acts of violence, as students tend to communicate with each other beforehand. Crisis squads tasked with making critical decisions in such cases are present in all NRW schools, according to Sven Christoffer, chairman of the Teachers' Association of North Rhine-Westphalia. However, it remains questionable whether these teams are always readily available.
In 2021, the Teachers' Association stated in an amendment to the School Act that there is often a lack of personnel for this purpose. To develop comprehensive protection strategies, including measures against violence at schools, professional support is necessary, the association asserted. Unfortunately, this support is not always forthcoming.
The situation has not improved substantially since then. Teachers are seldom violence prevention specialists. The chairman of the Teachers' Association, Sven Christoffer, advocates for the North Rhine-Westphalia Ministry of Education to provide more support.
The Teachers' Association SchaLL also urged the Minister of Education on Wednesday to invest more in prevention. Regular, readily available crisis squads and training are indispensable, they said. Addressing bullying and exclusion is likewise important.
Sven Christoffer of Teachers NRW suggests that the school psychological service could offer greater support to schools. This service is located at the districts and cities and employs experts. For example, a psychologically trained contact person could visit schools once a week, the association chairman says. In some places, similar consultation hours with the police have already been agreed upon, leading to a noticeable decrease in the potential for violence at these schools.
The Ministry of Education points to the 54 school psychological counseling centers already supporting schools throughout the state. They also plan to provide 54 additional positions for specialists in "systemic extremism prevention" for the upcoming school year.
However, none of the juvenile school shooters in Germany to date have been motivated by political, extremist, or Islamist agendas. Instead, psychologists have attributed thus far incidents to issues such as narcissistic personality disorder or despair due to loneliness and bullying.
Rehearsing school shootings? Absolutely not!
Most experts strongly oppose school shooting drills. Regular such drills could create an atmosphere of fear, explains the NRW Ministry of Education. Criminal psychologist Roshdi adds that such exercises could have traumatic effects on students and teachers alike.
Sources:- Statement by Interior Minister Reul- Interview with criminal psychologist Karoline Roshdi- Interview and statement by the NRW Teachers' Association- Statement by the SchaLL Teachers' Union- Statement by the NRW Ministry of Education- Subscribe here to our NRW politics newsletter | more**
Insights from Enrichment Data:
Ensuring the safety of schools against emergencies involves comprehensive crisis prevention plans and well-executed emergency response procedures. These measures typically include regular risk assessment, collaboration with authorities, student monitoring, community engagement, emergency protocols, effective communication, training and drills, and support services. Moreover, a legal framework addresses threats, and cooperation with law enforcement is integral to investigating and implementing legal measures against those responsible.
- The economic and social policy in NRW should provide more support to schools, particularly in the area of violence prevention, as the Teachers' Association of North Rhine-Westphalia has highlighted a lack of personnel for this purpose, making it difficult to implement comprehensive protection strategies.
- Besides emergency handbooks and crisis squads, education-and-self-development programs could focus on general-news topics, such as social awareness and emotional intelligence, to help students recognize and handle warning signs that may indicate a classmate is heading towards a crisis that could culminate in violence against others. This approach could potentially reduce the number of tragedies like school shootings and contribute to creating a safer school environment. Furthermore, collaboration with mental health professionals and law enforcement could also be incorporated into these programs to foster a culture of support and safety in schools.
