For years, ‘Duck, Cover and Hold’ was what was said to be the standard safety method in the event of an earthquake. But only until April 25 this year, when just before noon, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck the country.

More than 9,000 people were killed, tens of thousands of houses were destroyed and hundreds of thousands rendered homeless, who are yet to be resettled. Since it was a Saturday, schools were closed, or else casualties could have sharply gone up. Even then more than 40 teachers and 25 students lost their lives.

In the aftermath of the quake, experts started raising questions whether DCH, which had been drilled for years, is the correct method in the event of a major quake.

A 5.3 aftershock on Thursday morning, just a week before seven months since the April 25 quake, once again forced people in Kathmandu to run out of their homes. It was a regular working day with most of the schools starting classes after festival holidays, hence parents scrambled to call schools to ask about their children’s safety.

Thursday’s aftershock once again made everyone think whether lesson had been learnt after the April 25 quake. In several districts including Gorkha, the epicentre, many people, especially children, were crushed to death because they were indoors.

DCH is a method which means duck under something strong—like a desk—then stay under cover and hold on until the shaking stops. But experts have started raising doubts whether the method should be practised in a country where buildings, especially in rural areas, are made of clay-mortar without required engineering.

After Thursday’s aftershock, teachers and school operators said students were “well-drilled” to stay calm and safe. Children and teachers spent most of the morning in open areas, they said. “After the April earthquake, our school had trained all students and teachers on ways of remaining safe,” Shyam Gopal Timsina, a teacher at the Dhapakhel-based GEMS, said. “Immediately after the aftershock, all the teachers and about 3,000 students gathered on the playground,” he said. “Students stayed where they were trained to be. After half an hour, we resumed classes.”

National Private and Boarding Schools Association Nepal Chairman Karna Bahadur Shahi said that schools learnt their lesson after the last earthquake. Shahi did agree that DCH “on which we focused all the time does not work in a country like ours where there is no guarantee that school buildings can withstand jolts.”

According to Shahi, schools had oriented students to move to an open space as the primary method to stay safe. The April 25 quake was described as a “wake up” call for Nepal where a major earthquake was long overdue. But with aftershocks continuing to unleash terror, experts say more discussions and measures are required as Nepal is highly prone to earthquakes.