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Safe to Learn Global Programmatic Framework

Benchmarks, evidence and resources to implement the Call to Action

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The Safe to Learn Global Programmatic Framework translates the Call to Action into clear, evidence-based interventions that governments and partners can use to prevent and respond to violence in and around schools. It brings together global standards, guidance and tools from coalition partners to support the design, implementation, and scale-up of effective approaches across education systems.

Benchmarks

At the heart of the framework are 24 benchmarks that outline what strong policies, systems, and practices look like in each area of the Call to Action. These benchmarks help countries assess their progress and identify priority actions to build safer, more protective learning environments. 
 

Evidence-informed interventions and resources

Alongside the benchmarks, the framework highlights key interventions drawn from global evidence on ‘what works’ to end violence in and around schools. Each intervention is accompanied by partner-developed resources that support practical implementation and adaptation to local contexts.

You can explore each Call to Action area below to see the full set of benchmarks, along with the related interventions and partner resources. These provide practical guidance and tools to support implementation across education systems.

Download the framework

1. Implement policy and legislation

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.

Accordion for Call to Action 1

Benchmark 1.1: The national government includes prevention of violence in and around schools as a specific strategy

An Education Sector Plan (ESP) presents a long-term vision for the education system of a country and outlines practical strategies and costed plans to achieve the objectives. It is a powerful tool for coordinating partners and for mobilizing additional domestic and external resources.

The Education Sector Analysis, which is the first step in the planning process, uses data and evidence to diagnose challenges to educational access, quality and learning, and identifies successes and opportunities.

Strategies for preventing school violence and promoting gender equality when embedded in ESPs can provide guidelines and budgets for implementation across the education system.

Key interventions

  • Support Education Sector Analysis or annual sector and policy reviews. These analyses or reviews should include the extent to which violence impinges on the objectives of the education sector; sources of data on different forms of violence including offline and online; how violence is addressed in existing policies; and capacity constraints within the system to address violence.
  • Promote violence prevention and response as a policy priority. This may include engaging young people, parents, teachers and the public to influence policymakers, as well as engaging in relevant treaty bodies, particularly during the pre-session Working Group of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and supporting governments’ state reporting to the UNCRC and its response to their concluding observations, where appropriate.
  • Advocate for violence prevention and response (including mental health and psychosocial support in humanitarian settings) to be explicitly included in education strategies and highlighted in sector plans.
  • Support the Ministry of Education to develop Education Sector Plans, formulate policies and design programmes to address violence in and around school and gender equality through action planning, financing and costing, implementation arrangements and monitoring and evaluation.

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Benchmark 1.2: There is explicit prohibition of corporal punishment in schools, and policies are in place to support positive discipline and classroom management

There is a clear human rights obligation to prohibit corporal punishment and other cruel or degrading forms of punishment in schools.

Nevertheless, as of 2019, there were 67 states where children may lawfully be subjected to corporal punishment in all or some schools. Even where prohibited by law, there are reports of the persistence of the practice in schools.

Effective implementation requires a comprehensive range of measures to prevent the use of physical and humiliating punishment, including raising awareness about the law, equipping teachers with the necessary positive, non-violent disciplinary techniques and responding appropriately when prohibition is breached.

The lack of legislation banning corporal punishment does not necessarily prevent schools – whether public or private – from taking the initiative to prohibit the use of violent disciplinary practices.

Key interventions

  • In countries where prohibition has not been achieved, identify processes for reforming the law that provide opportunities for enacting prohibiting legislation.
  • Raise awareness among adults and children about the harmful impacts of physical and humiliating punishment and enlist them as vocal advocates for legal reform and enforcement of this reform down to school level. Before involving children, ensure there has been careful assessment of the risks associated with children’s participation in speaking out, campaigning or advocating.
  • Strengthen systems in the education sector to monitor compliance through school inspection mechanisms and by establishing independent, trusted reporting mechanisms; and educate people about the mechanisms.
  • Help build a range of appropriate measures to address any continued use of physical and humiliating punishment by teachers and school leaders. This may include initial and in-service training on the law, and additional support for learning violence prevention, positive discipline and classroom management skills, building capacity for digital literacy and responding to cases of violence.

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Benchmark 1.3: The roles and responsibilities of the Ministry of Education in response and referral to incidents of violence are clearly set out in the multisectoral national child protection policy framework

Virtually all countries have civil frameworks that address child protection, which set out state accountabilities for identification, reporting, referral, investigation, treatment and follow-up of instances of child maltreatment.

As child protection is inherently intersectoral, the UNCRC has recommended the establishment of national coordinating frameworks on violence against children. These would provide a common frame of reference and a mechanism for communication on child protection among government ministries and with civil society actors.

Some countries have national plans of action that set out commitments of various ministries to prevent and respond to violence against children. Ministries of education are in a unique position, as schools allow for teachers to build a rapport with children that enables them to identify and refer children in need of care and protection, regardless of whether violence occurs at or outside of school.

School staff members are often required by child protection systems to report when there are reasonable grounds to conclude that a child has been abused.

Key interventions

  • Analyse child protection civil frameworks to assess the degree to which forms of violence that are associated with school settings may trigger a child protection response.
  • Establish / review child protection frameworks that trigger a child protection response to violence against children, including to violence against children associated with school settings (occurred inside or outside the school).
  • Ensure that systems of reporting and referral in the education sector are effective and child-friendly, include training school personnel to handle disclosure and cases of offline and online violence, as well as how to work with children who are showing signs of psychological distress due to violence.
  • Support the participation of education authorities in child protection coordination mechanisms at national, provincial, district and local levels.
  • Facilitate links between the education sector and local social service, health and justice sectors, to establish a case-management system and develop a referral mechanism for child victims, including online counselling and reporting systems.
  • Advocate for the Minister of Education to participate in multisectoral policies, plans and strategies on violence against children and gender-based violence (ex. by coordinating/linking schools with child protection authorities), including country pathfinding where relevant

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Benchmark 1.4: The country has endorsed the Safe Schools Declaration and in situations of armed conflict is implementing the Guidelines for Protecting Schools and Universities from Military Use during Armed Conflict

According to the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack, attacks on education are any intentional threat or use of force – carried out for political, military, ideological, sectarian, ethnic, religious or criminal reasons – against students, educators and educational institutions. They violate the right to education and other human rights that are internationally protected and applicable at all times.

The Safe Schools Declaration is an inter-governmental political commitment that provides countries with the opportunity to express political support for the protection of students, teachers and schools during times of armed conflict; the importance of the continuation of education during armed conflict; and the implementation of the Guidelines for Protecting Schools and Universities from Military Use during Armed Conflict.

As of November 2018, 82 states had endorsed the Declaration. Notes School staff and management committees should work directly with children to explore and understand the root causes of violent behaviour. Including measures to prevent violence in school curricula is more effective than one-off measures.

The following strategies from the World Health Organization (WHO) INSPIRE framework can be applied in school curricula:

Key interventions

  • Advocate for and support all governments to endorse the Safe Schools Declaration.
  • Provide technical support to governments to bring the Guidelines for Protecting Schools and Universities from Military Use during Armed Conflict into domestic policy and operational frameworks as far as possible and appropriate.
  • Engage with all parties involved in a conflict to incorporate the Guidelines into their doctrine, military manuals, rules of engagement, operational orders and other means of dissemination.
  • Contribute to monitoring and reporting on attacks on schools, if applicable through the United Nations-led Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism, in compliance with Security Council Resolution 1998.
  • Build the capacity of education authorities and service providers to put in place measures to reduce the risk of attacks, to respond quickly to risks and to have a clear plan for the safe re-opening of schools after attacks.

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2. Strengthen prevention, risk mitigation and response in education systems and schools

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

Accordion for Call to Action 2

Benchmark 2.1: Key violence prevention strategies are embedded in curriculum-based activities for children

School staff and management committees should work directly with children to explore and understand the root causes of violent behaviour. Including measures to prevent violence in school curricula is more effective than one-off measures.

The following strategies from the World Health Organization (WHO) INSPIRE framework can be applied in school curricula:

  • Develop life skills: These are cognitive, social and emotional skills used to cope with everyday life. They include problem-solving, critical thinking, communication, decision-making, creative thinking, relationship skills, building self-awareness, empathy, and coping with stress and emotions.
  • Teach children about safe behaviour: This includes the ability to recognize situations, both offline and online, in which abuse or violence can happen, how to avoid potentially risky situations and where to find help. This knowledge can make children less vulnerable to abuse and reduce the risk of violence happening again.
  • Promote positive social and gender norms and equal relationships: Social and cultural expectations around gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity and disability can increase the risk of bullying and other forms of violence against girls and children from minority groups. Challenging harmful norms and strengthening those that promote non-violent, positive and equal relationships can reduce any justification for violent behaviour.

Key interventions

  • Analyse existing curriculum at multiple levels – including at the national level with the Ministry of Education, at the teacher-training level and at the school level - to identify the extent to which violence- prevention strategies are incorporated and opportunities for introducing them.
  • Support pilot-testing of approaches , with evaluation and budgeted scale-up, where pilots are effective in extracurricular contexts.
  • Advocate for the use of effective evidence-based approaches when delivering curriculum-based activities, such as curricula and training materials that are gender-transformative and which challenge social norms and gender norms that increase the risk of violence for both girls and boys.
  • Support the inclusion – in existing curricula and extracurricular activities – of peace education and life-skills training to build self-efficacy to act in response to violence; and identify new entry points for such training in and through schools.
  • Ensure that all forms of violence are reflected in student curricula and teacher training related to violence prevention, including, for example, sexual abuse, intimate partner violence, gang violence and online violence.

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Benchmark 2.2: Child safeguarding principles and procedures are in place in schools, inclusive of codes of conduct, child-friendly reporting and referral procedures, and safe recruitment standards

Schools need a documented set of policies and procedures to keep children safe and to respond to child protection concerns.

These measures should be set out in a national child protection/safeguarding policy for schools that provides clear guidance to all education staff in a country on the rationale for protecting children, the responsibilities and roles of staff members, particularly in terms of incident response, codes of conduct, and reporting, referral, monitoring and accountability.

This policy should require all sub-national education authorities, as well as all schools operating under their purview, to develop their own localized child protection/safeguarding policies which reflect local contexts but conform to the national policy.

The lack of a national policy does not necessarily prevent schools – whether public or private – from taking the initiative to develop their own localized child protection/safeguarding policies.

Key interventions

  • Map existing child protection/safeguarding policies and procedures in national policy and as practiced in schools, inclusive of codes of conduct, child-friendly reporting and referral procedures, and safe recruitment standards.
  • Support the establishment or strengthening of a national child protection/safeguarding policy for schools, advocating for appropriate resource allocation for implementation.
  • Ensure budgeting of the child protection/ safeguarding policies.
  • Establish or strengthen a system to monitor the compliance of the child protection/safeguarding policy through formal complaints procedures, including building the capacity of the school inspectorate to conduct regular reviews of progress in implementing national education policy.
  • Identify and build the capacity of child protection/ safeguarding focal points at national, district and school levels, to support the implementation of policies and procedures at all levels. This may include child protection/ safeguarding in pre-service and in-service training of teachers, counsellors and other education staff.
  • Involve students in ensuring school level child-friendly reporting channels are in place, improving reporting channels and mechanisms, monitoring their use, challenging stigma related to reporting and in ensuring students of all ages and backgrounds are aware of and understand the reporting channels.
  • Educate parents and students about the importance of safeguarding policies and involve rights-holders in advocating for the development of a safeguarding policy.

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Benchmark 2.3: Each school has at least one focal point who is capacitated to provide front-line mental health/psychosocial support to children experiencing violence

Schools need school leaders, school management and education authorities to be supportive of schools as safe places to learn and need a designated child protection focal point to offer guidance and support to children experiencing violence, help identify children with mental health or behavioural concerns, and oversee school-wide prevention initiatives.

In many countries, this role has been designated to school counsellors. A 2013 study found that school-based counselling is well established in 62 countries across the global, and mandatory in 39. While the role initially supported students’ academic and career development, there is increasing focus on their mental health and well-being.

Counselling is typically delivered by experienced teachers with an additional postgraduate qualification, and sometimes by specialist social workers or psychologists. Meeting the full continuum of student needs also requires collaboration between school counselors and community mental health providers and social workers.

Key interventions

  • Analyse existing education legislation or policy and advocate for mandated school counselling and mental health support.
  • Review the job description of school counsellors and advocate for the inclusion of appropriate responsibilities for child protection and mental health concerns.
  • Strengthen the training curriculum for school counsellors and other associated specialist personnel in schools.
  • Train and support school counsellors.
  • Build linkages and referral pathways between schools and community mental health providers and social workers.
  • Support raising awareness / updating the school management, leaders and education authorities on child safeguarding and child protection in school.

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Benchmark 2.4: The physical environment in and around schools is safe and designed with the well-being of children in mind

Education authorities should ensure safe and secure physical environments in and around schools.

Minimum standards include making sure that children can move safely to and from school; that sanitary facilities and classroom architecture and design are adapted so they are gender-responsive, accessible for children with disabilities and safe and secure.

Disorder (such as litter, graffiti and disrepair), shared unsupervised spaces and areas that are isolated or poorly lit can increase the risk of violent incidents and affect academic performance.

The appearance and features of school buildings and grounds should be reviewed to identify areas that could be improved.

Key interventions

  • Promote cross-country sharing of risk assessment methodologies for child-friendly school infrastructures that consider the special needs, vulnerabilities and capacities of students and support the education authorities in their adaptation.
  • Advocate that disaster risk reduction (DRR) plans identify violence ‘hotspots’ and locations where children feel unsafe in and around schools, and findings for DRR mitigation plans. Students and the larger community around the school may be instrumental in this identification and advocacy.
  • Review national school building codes and specifications in view of inclusion of minimum standards for school safety.
  • Advocate for improvements in education infrastructure to make schools more safe and secure, such as including social and environmental management safeguard frameworks in bilateral development agreements.
  • Explore possible partnerships with businesses or civil society groups to enhance student safety to and from school.

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3. Shift social and gender norms and promote behaviour change

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.

Accordion for Call to Action 3

Benchmark 3.1: There is wide dissemination and engagement with stakeholders to build knowledge and appreciation of child rights and laws prohibiting violence

Addressing school-related gender-based violence means committing to actions that increase the awareness and involve the participation of the entire school community.

This involves stakeholders at the school level, including students, teachers, school support staff, heads and principals; those in the local community; and government education authorities.

It requires these stakeholders to work together to build knowledge and appreciation of child rights and laws prohibiting violence, undertake activities aimed at making schools safer, more child-friendly and gender-sensitive, and to foster a positive learning environment for students and educators.

In addition to school management, student councils, parents and community members must be enlisted to support efforts to prevent and respond to violence in and through schools.

Key interventions

  • Provide national policies or guidelines that give districts and schools strategies on how to widely disseminate information to school and community members on child rights with regard to violence and laws prohibiting violence against children.
  • Build the capacity of parent-teacher associations and school management committees to incorporate into their concerns both offline and online efforts to prevent and respond to violence.
  • Increase opportunities for students to express their concerns safely and participate in the design and implementation of activities aimed at making schools safer and as relevant across all the Calls to Action.
  • Develop policies for local entities such as youth and community organizations, businesses and the police, the judiciary, and child welfare agencies, to partner with schools to prevent violence.
  • Facilitate opportunities for community members, including young people, to discuss the causes of violence and to co-create solutions to address violence in schools through formal curricula or other activities. Support pilot-testing of these approaches wherever possible and capture evidence for scaling up these pilots where appropriate.

Resources

Benchmark 3.2: Specific, evidence-informed interventions are implemented and evaluated with schools, addressing social norms that drive key forms of violence

There is an array of Communication for Development (C4D) approaches aimed at preventing violence that have been tested and proven effective in changing behaviours related to violence in schools, including, for example, bullying, intimate partner violence, protection from child sexual abuse and violent discipline.

C4D approaches to end violence in schools aim to:

  • Increase demand among students, teachers, parents and community members for policies, services and systems that promote safe school environments
  • Increase adoption of positive behaviours that help to end violence
  • Facilitate change in perceptions and attitudes about violence and bystander action
  • Decrease stigma and discrimination that can lead to violence
  • Promote positive and equitable social and gender norms that can decrease violence
  • Empower and engage youth and broader communities to act and to have their voices heard in decision-making processes about prevention and response to violence

Of critical importance is ensuring that these C4D interventions work across all levels (individual, interpersonal, community and institutional and policy levels) to promote a culture where violence is considered unacceptable and where people feel empowered to act to end it. Therefore, C4D approaches are incorporated throughout the programmatic framework.

Key interventions

  • Identify the barriers and motivators to change social acceptance of violence in schools including the specific attitudes and norms that need to change. This exercise can also help set baselines for tracking and monitoring changes in knowledge, attitudes, behaviours and norms over time.
  • Adapt, and embed in curriculum, evidence-based anti-bullying programmes that address social and emotional skills, challenge social norms around bullying and equip student to respond to bullying (See 2.1). Include cyber bullying and internet safety, digital citizenship and online social etiquette in antibullying initiatives.
  • Provide national policies or guidelines that give guidance on developing and implementing evidence-based interventions to address social norms surrounding key forms of violence (e.g. bullying, digital safety, sexual abuse and exploitation, youth and gang violence).
  • Support programs that prevent young people from entering gangs, reduce gang violence, and/or help young people get out of gangs.
  • Bring attention to new norms such as bystander action or positive discipline strategies by identifying and recognizing positive role models and peer advocates who can encourage and support others to take action.
  • Involve young people, parents, teachers and other community members in the design and implementation of school- and national-level policies to make schools safer, and support school communities to advocate for administrative support to implement these measures.

Resources

Benchmark 3.3: Young people, parents, teachers and community members in and around schools engaged and active on the topic of school violence

UNICEF has a key role to play in raising awareness about the scale and impacts of violence in schools, generating public dialogue and enlisting young people and the public as advocates and agents of change.

This strategy encourages working across behavioural change and public communications programmes; identifying specific changes to policy or practice that would be supported or accelerated by youth and public engagement; and then devising a strategy to achieve them. Indeed, other sections of the Call to Action will also be supported, accelerated and amplified by youth and public engagement.

The Key Interventions listed below, therefore, should be critical tools in the overall advancement of the integrated Safe to Learn campaign.

Key interventions

  • Provide national policies or guidelines that outline communication for development initiatives (ie., media, arts, awareness and empowerment raising activities) to engage students, parents and communities in dialogue and action against violence.
  • This could include adapting advocacy and communications materials developed for the global Safe to Learn campaign to local contexts and use them to influence policymakers, donors and the public; one effective model, for example, is identifying first-person or ‘what’s working’ stories.
  • Using national- or local-level data on the incidence, nature, impacts and costs of school violence, both offline and online, to raise awareness among teachers, parents, policymakers, donors, the media and the public and to advocate for change.
  • Providing opportunities for youth and the public to communicate with policymakers and donors via polls, petitions and other means, as appropriate in the local context.
  • Mobilizing the public and other audiences to take action by enlisting local celebrities, influencers and other partners.

Resources

4. Invest resources effectively

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

Accordion for Call to Action 4

Benchmark 4.1: Domestic resources are allocated to support people, programming and processes to end violence in schools

Advocacy for additional budgetary allocation to ministries of education can be a hard sell in countries that struggle to cover basic recurrent expenditure, such as teachers’ salaries, from domestic resources.

However, expenditure on violence prevention and response can be a minor element of auxiliary expenditure.

This expenditure is rarely visible in charts of accounts. It is, nevertheless, important that expenditure targeted for violence prevention and response is tracked – at national or local level – as a reflection of government effort.

Key interventions

  • Generate and use evidence on the costs of violence in and around schools, including online violence, to advocate for greater and better public investment in school-based violence prevention and response; young people and the public may be instrumental in this advocacy.
  • Support analysis of existing public expenditure on violence prevention and response for schools at national, district and school-levels, and costing of new or ongoing initiatives.
  • Work with ministries of education at national and subnational levels to strengthen their budget submissions with appropriate costing and results indicators for violence prevention and response activities.

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Benchmark 4.2: Donors provide funding targeting the country level to end violence in schools, investing in effective approaches

International organizations and bilateral donors allocate approximately US$12 billion annually to education. A further US$0.5 billion per year is provided through humanitarian funding windows for education in emergencies.

Donors can therefore play an influential role in preventing and addressing school violence.

Due to its clear impact on learning, violence reduction in and through schools should be a core component that is integrated into international development assistance and humanitarian response plans in the education sector.

This must include elements of mental health and psychosocial support for children who have experienced trauma due to violence and conflict.

Key interventions

  • Advocate for development and humanitarian donors at the country and global levels to increase funding of effective approaches to end violence in schools and to measure violence reduction as an explicit outcome. This includes development partners such as UNICEF, the World Bank, WHO, the Global Partnership to End Violence against Children, the Global Partnership for Education and Education Cannot Wait, among others.
  • Advocate for increased bilateral programming, directly targeting violence in schools, or including an explicit focus on addressing violence through broader education, early childhood development, social protection and other programmes.
  • In humanitarian situations, support the Education and Child Protection Cluster to integrate violence prevention and response in and through schools as a part of humanitarian response plans.

Resources

Benchmark 4.3: There is private sector engagement in the provision of financial and non-financial resources including technical support, expertise and advocacy towards ending violence in school

Private-sector engagement can be important at various levels: from corporate social responsibility to private philanthropies and individual giving, it can be an important source of funding and in-kind resources. Through shared value partnerships, UNICEF can also explore how private-sector core business operations, skills and expertise can help us deliver on commitments to end violence in and through schools – including online violence. Finally, in many countries the private-sector entities have taken on a significant role in providing public and non-state education, and thus have an obligation to protect children from violence in and around their institutions.

Key interventions

  • Generate and use evidence on the costs of violence in schools to advocate for greater and better private-sector investment in violence prevention and response in and through schools, including online violence.
  • Develop national-level business cases detailing the rationale for investing in school-based violence prevention and response and funding needs.
  • Identify local companies, civil society organizations and philanthropic entities interested in partnerships focused on ending violence in and through schools.
  • Advocate for social media companies to put in place protocols to identify and prevent cyberbullying and other forms of online violence on their platforms.
  • Support governments to improve regulatory capacity in relation to violence in private-sector education settings, to ensure the protection and safety of children in their schools and facilities in line with the United Nations Global Compact on Child Rights and Business Principles and applicable national legislation.

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5. Generate and use evidence

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. 

Accordion for Call to Action 5

Benchmark 5.1: Information and reporting of incidents allow for disaggregated baseline information and monitoring of trends and reflect needs and gaps in the system

Every school should have a system to record incidents of violence, as well as the school’s response to them. Such information may include the date, time and location of the incident, the type of violence, and how the school responded.

These records are confidential and should be kept in password-protected files or under lock and key. Anonymized data should then be regularly collected at district level and submitted to the line ministry responsible for centralized data.

There should be oversight to ensure schools’ responses to violence are adequate. The data should then be monitored and used to strengthen violence prevention interventions.

Nearly all countries have an education management information system (EMIS), which may facilitate the gathering of basic schools data for ministries of education. Therefore, integrating key indicators on violence into existing EMIS systems is one sustainable approach to monitoring the problem and any related programmatic responses.

Key interventions

  • Establish national information management systems capable of gathering information on incidents of violence that can be disaggregated at least by age and sex.
  • Build capacity at district and school levels for maintenance of confidential records about protection related incidents in the school.
  • Promote regular analysis in view of monitoring progress and identifying trends.

Resources

Benchmark 5.2: There is regular data collection on prevalence and forms of violence in schools using methods that follow high ethical standards

Specialized surveys on violence in schools as well as general surveys with questions on school violence have been implemented in many countries. These often use mixed methods and provide detailed information on the forms and circumstances of violence experienced by students.

For reasons of sustainability and to generate internationally comparable data, it is recommended that countries implement the appropriate modules on school violence from international survey programmes, such as the Global School-based Student Health Survey (GSHS) and the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) survey.

Other secondary tools, such as classroom observation techniques, measure violence or behaviours that are associated with or help prevent violence in the classroom; these may also be worth piloting and can potentially be used to triangulate data.

Key interventions

  • Use existing data on school violence from GSHS or similar surveys to inform the design and monitoring of programmes.
  • Advocate for the collection of data on school violence on a regular basis (for example, every 3-5 years).
  • Incorporate standard indicators on school violence in country planning documents.
  • Advocate for the collection of data on violence occurring in and around schools, disaggregated by sex and age, as part of administrative data systems, including EMIS.
  • Plan and secure resources for formative research and evidence-generation on gender and social norms influencing violent behaviours in and through schools.

Resources

Benchmark 5.3: Decisions on replication and scale-up of violence prevention initiatives are based on evaluations of trailed models and approaches

Evaluating the effectiveness of interventions to reduce violence is an essential part of violence prevention, showing whether an activity is an effective use of resources and is worth continuing or scaling up.

Introducing new interventions in schools should also be done with reference to existing evidence-based models that have been positively evaluated.

Outcomes can also be incorporated into education management information systems (See 5.1), which can be used to monitor violence at school, district and national levels.

Key interventions

  • Analyse forms of violence in and around schools that are of major concern in view of planning and prioritizing interventions.
  • Promote the use of the ‘INSPIRE’ handbook, which explains in detail how to choose and implement interventions that will fit national and local needs and context.
  • Build a framework for monitoring and evaluation at the beginning of the intervention, and make sure there is baseline data against which progress can be assessed.
  • Work with academic institutions or other partners to establish whether violence-prevention activities are working by evaluating activities and use the findings to strengthen prevention strategies.
  • Include outcome indicators in broader monitoring and evaluation systems that collect data on violence.
  • Use research to identify the attitudes and social norms that contribute to violence and to identify drivers of change and use this evidence to inform interventions and to monitor and track change over time.

Resources

A 9-year-old girl poses in front of a school black board

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