Safe to Learn Call to Action

National, regional, and local governments develop, implement, and enforce laws and policies that protect all children from all forms of violence in, around, and through schools, including online.

• National governments prohibit all forms of violence in schools including corporal punishment.
• Ministries of Education implement policies to improve systems, capacity, and skills across the education system including positive discipline and classroom management to address violence in schools.
• National governments establish multi-sectoral response and referral mechanisms with clear roles and responsibilities of the Ministry of Education to address violence in schools.
• National governments facilitate collaboration with children, young people, and survivors of violence in all their diversity, in national education system planning and the development of national policies and legislation.

School staff and school management committees provide safe and gender-transformative learning environments for all children that promote positive discipline, child-centred teaching, and protect and improve children’s physical and mental well-being.

• School curricula and learning materials include effective approaches for preventing violence, addressing harmful social and gender norms, and promoting equality, respect, and diversity.
• School safeguarding policies and procedures, such as Codes of Conduct, safe recruiting standards, online safety guidance, and violence reporting procedures and referral mechanisms are implemented and monitored in schools.
• Teachers and school staff are trained and supported to deliver safe and inclusive education.
• Teachers’ and students’ mental health and psychosocial well-being is supported with access to mental health and psycho-social support in all learning environments.
• Schools ensure the physical environment in and around schools is safe and designed for the well-being of all students in all their diversity, including in emergencies and protracted crises.

Ministries of Education, schools, community leaders, faith leaders, parents/caregivers, and students/peers work together through a ‘whole school approach’ to promote non-violent behaviours and positive social and gender norms to enable a safe school environment.

• Evidence-based interventions are put in place at the school-level to support and enable teachers, parents, and community leaders to promote non-violent behaviours and a safe environment in and around schools.
• Schools promote child-rights education and social and emotional learning and life-skills training, ensuring that children and teachers know their rights and respect the rights of others.
• Teachers, counsellors, and the whole school community are provided with tools to implement gender transformative education that addresses harmful stereotypes and gender gaps.

Increased, and evidence-based use of, investments targeted at ending violence in, around and through schools.

• National governments increase domestic financing for education and increase support for people, programming, and processes to end violence in, around and through schools.
• Donors, both public and private, increase financial and technical resources to end violence in, around and through schools.
• New and innovative forms of financing are leveraged by governments and their partners to contribute to efforts to end violence in, around and through schools.
• Governments and donors provide long-term flexible funding for youth and survivor organizations leading sustainable local advocacy and programme initiatives. 

National governments, schools, international organizations, humanitarian actors, and donors generate and use context-specific evidence and disaggregated data to understand and monitor the drivers of violence in and around schools and what works to address it. 

• Governments, schools, and donors support the disaggregated data collection and monitoring of activities that prevent violence in schools.
• National governments, donors, and research partners invest in research, monitoring and evaluation of interventions to address violence in schools, including social and behavioural evidence, formative research, and longitudinal studies.
• National education systems integrate indicators on school violence into national data sets and conduct regular disaggregated data collection on the prevalence and forms of violence in schools using methods that adhere to high ethical standards.