Japan’s National Institute for School Teachers and Staff Development released a September 28 training module challenging schools to make evacuation drills more realistic by planning for injuries, power failures, bad weather, and communication breakdowns.
Editorial Note
This article covers professional-development material published by Japan’s National Institute for School Teachers and Staff Development, commonly known as NITS. The module is intended to support school-level professional learning and should not be interpreted as a new statute requiring one identical evacuation procedure at every Japanese school.
Emergency planning must reflect local hazards, building design, student needs, staffing, emergency-service guidance, and applicable government requirements. This article is educational information and is not emergency-management or legal advice.
Japan’s national teacher-development institute released a striking new training module on September 28 with a deliberately uncomfortable question: “Can that evacuation drill save lives?” The NITS material challenges schools to examine drills that assume good weather, functioning electricity, no injuries, and perfectly working communication systems.
Bottom Line
The core message is simple: a drill can become a ritual instead of preparation. If everyone knows exactly what will happen, the alarm always works, no one is injured, every route is open, and the exercise is postponed when conditions are inconvenient, staff may be practicing a scenario that bears little resemblance to a real emergency.
NITS specifically raises examples such as postponing because of rain even though earthquakes do not wait for good weather, automatically reporting that everyone is fine without considering casualties, and relying on broadcast instructions despite the possibility of a power failure.
What Happened
NITS published School-Based Training Series No. 190 on September 28. The module features Keio University associate professor Satoko Oki and includes a video, downloadable training material, and an exercise sheet designed for school staff to adapt to their own circumstances.
NITS describes the broader series as a professional-development format built around approximately 20-minute lecture videos that schools can use inside roughly 60-minute staff learning sessions. The intention is for staff to watch, discuss, practice, and reflect rather than passively consume a presentation.
What This Means
Emergency preparedness is partly an exercise in identifying assumptions. A plan may depend on electricity, mobile phones, a particular stairwell, a particular employee, a functioning public-address system, or a normal number of adults being present.
A realistic drill asks what happens when those assumptions fail. That mindset shifts emergency planning from memorizing a route to understanding the school as a system that may have to operate under degraded conditions.
Who This Affects
Teachers are central because students often look to them immediately during an emergency. School leaders, office staff, nurses, custodial employees, special-education personnel, and other employees also need clearly understood responsibilities.
Students with disabilities, mobility limitations, health conditions, communication needs, or sensory needs require particular attention. A plan cannot be called successful simply because most people can follow it.
Why Routine Drills Can Create False Confidence
Repetition can build useful habits, but repetition without variation can also teach people to expect a script. Students may learn that a drill always begins with an announcement, follows the same route, ends on the same field, and occurs when adults have already prepared for it.
Real emergencies are less cooperative. A corridor may be blocked, weather may be dangerous, someone may need medical help, a teacher may be absent, or the preferred assembly area may itself be unsafe.
Schools Need Redundancy
Strong safety systems rarely depend on one communication method or one person. Schools should consider backup methods for alerts, student accounting, family communication, first aid, building access, and coordination with emergency responders.
Redundancy also means developing staff judgment. Employees should understand the purpose behind procedures so they can adapt when the written plan cannot be followed exactly.
What This Does Not Mean
The NITS module does not mean routine drills are useless. Familiarity with basic emergency behaviors can reduce confusion, and age-appropriate repetition remains important.
It also does not mean schools should deliberately frighten children with chaotic simulations. Realism should be developmentally appropriate, carefully planned, and designed to build competence rather than anxiety.
The Bigger Picture
Japan faces multiple natural hazards, including earthquakes, tsunami risk in some areas, typhoons, flooding, landslides, and extreme weather. Schools therefore occupy an important place in community preparedness.
The lesson also travels well internationally. Whether the hazard is wildfire, hurricane, earthquake, tornado, fire, or infrastructure failure, the question is the same: does the drill test the plan, or does the drill merely prove that everyone can follow a script written for perfect conditions?
What Happens Next
Schools can use the NITS materials during staff professional development and adapt the exercises to local conditions. The most productive follow-up would involve identifying one or two unrealistic assumptions in existing drills and changing future exercises deliberately.
Schools should also document lessons after drills. A problem discovered during practice is valuable if it leads to a correction before a real emergency.
Why This Matters
Emergency drills are one of the rare school activities whose effectiveness may be tested under life-threatening conditions. That makes complacency especially dangerous.
NITS’s September 28 module matters because it reframes preparedness from compliance to capability. A successful drill should not merely end with everyone lined up neatly; it should teach the school something it did not already know.
Key Takeaways
NITS released School-Based Training Series No. 190 on September 28.
The module asks whether ordinary evacuation drills would work under real emergency conditions.
Examples include bad weather, injuries, power failures, and unreliable broadcast systems.
NITS provides a video, supporting materials, and a staff exercise sheet.
The resource is professional-development guidance, not a new national statute.
Schools should test assumptions and backup systems rather than merely repeat predictable routines.
Realistic drills should remain developmentally appropriate and avoid unnecessarily frightening students.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is NITS?
NITS is Japan’s National Institute for School Teachers and Staff Development. It provides professional-learning resources and training for education personnel.
What is unusual about the September 28 module?
Instead of simply explaining how to conduct a standard drill, it asks schools to examine unrealistic assumptions built into their current exercises. The goal is to make preparedness more adaptive.
Does Japan now require schools to conduct drills in bad weather?
The resource does not establish a simple new nationwide requirement of that kind. It uses weather as an example of why schools should question whether their drills reflect real emergencies.
Should schools make drills more frightening to make them realistic?
No. Realism should improve planning and decision-making without creating unnecessary fear or trauma for students.
Final Thoughts
A drill is valuable when it reveals weakness. If every exercise ends exactly as expected, schools should eventually ask whether they are testing the system strongly enough.
Japan’s September 28 teacher-training resource poses that question directly. The best emergency plan is not the one that looks perfect on paper; it is the one people can still use when the situation stops behaving according to the plan.
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Sources
NITS — “Can That Evacuation Drill Save Lives?” School-Based Training Series No. 190
https://www.nits.go.jp/materials/intramural/190.html
NITS — School-Based Training Series
