The competence of hazard prediction and risk avoidance has become one of the key concepts in school safety education in recent years. The purpose of this study was to develop an evaluation method of the competence of hazard prediction and risk avoidance for elementary school children.
This study consisted of 3 surveys. In the survey 1, self-report questionnaires were distributed to 4^th, 5^th and 6^th grade children (n=396) in three elementary schools. In the questionnaires, 8 colored illustrations that showed dangerous situations for children were utilized to evaluate their competence of hazard prediction and risk avoidance. After children saw these illustrations, they were asked to describe the hazards they predicted and how to avoid the risks. Their answers were scored by researchers later. The questionnaires also contained the questions concerning the safety awareness and behaviors. The correlations between the scores of the competence items and other questions were calculated to prove the criterion-related validity of the competence items.
In the survey 2, a safety education program was carried out for 4^th grade elementary school children (n=24). Pre- and post-tests contained the competence items were conducted to prove the content validity of the items. In the survey 3, re-test reliability was confirmed among 5^th grade children (n=64).
The results thus obtained proved the reliability and validity of the evaluation method of the competence of hazard prediction and risk avoidance. In addition, practical applications and problems of this method were discussed.

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A questionnaire survey was performed to clarify the needs for promoting disaster safety education of leading school teachers on disaster prevention in Miyagi prefecture. The main findings were as follows.
1) Over 90% of respondents answered that the understanding and the cooperation for disaster safety education in school by school managers is required.
2) Web-site for disaster safety education as teaching materials and guest teachers were regarded as most important to support disaster safety education in school.
3) As a effective education program, over 80% of respondents answered that the regional characteristics and disaster types should be considered.
The findings in this study suggest that the education program which take account of regional characteristics and information platform as a supporting system are required to perform disaster safety education in school. Finally, the construction of regional consortium based on industry-university-government cooperation to respond the needs from school teachers was discussed.

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The purpose of this study is to clarify the present status of the awareness for risk management among school staffs and the actual status of school risk management, and what on-the-job training course and/or risk communication would be most effective to promote school safety. For this purpose, an attitude survey was conducted to 2572 school staffs (i.e., principals, vice-principals homeroom-teachers, yogo teachers, and clerks) in O prefecture, and 1879 staffs responded.
The main findings were as follows:
1) The importance of constructing risk management system were highly recognized among school staffs (98.5% of respondents), whereas the awareness for risk management that leads to actual risk-avoiding behavior was lower (83.6% of the respondents).
2) While administrative staffs had high awareness for risk management, clerks showed lower awareness compared to other kinds of staffs.
3) Daily safety measures as well as total school safety plan and organization were practiced in 83.8% of the schools that were surveyed. However, safety measures that assumed a serious incident/accident crisis were actually practiced in only 41.5% of the schools.
4) Almost all school staffs (99.9%) recognized a training course for school risk management was important, while less (91.6%) though the course was useful. Furthermore, only 63.9% of the school actually arranged staffs’ work hours for such training courses.
5) Only 21.5% of clerks had a chance of taking training courses in school risk management, whereas 51.8% of the administrative staff recognized such circumstances.
These findings suggested that giving school staffs including clerks effective training courses in school risk management should enhance the awareness for risk management throughout the school staffs, which eventually might develop ability for school risk management.

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This paper is intended as an investigation of actual state of safety in elementary school children. In this study, a questionnaire survey was carried out to investigate the safety of children at public elementary schools in Shizuoka prefecture, and 117 answers from all grades were obtained. In this study, open-ended and alternative choice methods were used.
Results obtained were as follows, 1) In elementary school children, safety consciousness of traffic was intensive and that of crime prevention was not intensive 2) Knowledge concerning safety, safety consciousness and danger surrounding elementary school students differed from school year to school year.
Results obtained from this study suggest that improvement of safety consciousness for crime prevention and safety education suitable for developmental stage are important.
This study was supported by research grant from the RISTEX.

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