Abstract:

At a time when the COVID 19 pandemic is shaking the world, the topic of protecting the population in emergencies is a socially important issue. At the same time, the field of civil protection has now come to the forefront of global interest. In addition to the current pandemic situation, it is important to raise awareness of crisis behavior. That is reason why life and health education is one of the basic areas of general education. The protection of life and health is one of the compulsory areas, which is taught at secondary schools within the subjects of the state educational program on the basis of Act no. 61/2015 Coll. on vocational education and training in secondary schools. It is the content of separate organizational forms of teaching - special-purpose exercises and courses. The European Union's education policy calls for support for school development and the modernization and improvement of education and the creation of suitable conditions for teaching life and health protection. The aim of the article is to find out the current state of how the statements of educational policy related to education in the researched area and related legislation are reflected in practice, and to find out their impact on teaching practice in lower secondary education. Based on the application of pre-test and post-test, we compared the knowledge of high school teachers before the instruction in the researched issue and after its implementation by the leaders of the life and health protection course. The group we researched consisted of teachers who do not have a physical education but participate in courses as instructors. The results of our research are that despite the proclaimed good intentions of various strategies, programs and reforms, the reality is different. It is worrying to find that the status of the subject of life and health protection is insufficient and the knowledge of the teachers themselves was insufficient as well. In conclusion, after the instruction of the course leaders, there was a significant improvement in knowledge and skills related to the protection of life and health. Teachers gained an overview in this area and acquired sufficient competencies for teaching life and health protection.

Keywords:

Purpose training, emergency, population protection, traffic accident, fire in household, first aid.