Preventing violence against adolescents: a Whole School Approach

• In Event: It takes a village and a school: Combatting school-related gender-based violence in the classroom and community

Proposal

Violence against children is a global problem. It is estimated that up to a billion children between ages 2-17 experience physical, sexual, or emotional violence or neglect every year (Hillis, Mercy, Amobi, and Kress, 2016). Violence against children and youth in Uganda is also widespread. According to the Uganda Violence Against Children Survey, for 18% of girls and 31% of boys, the first incident of sexual violence prior to age 18 occurs in the school; for boys, 24% of perpetrators are classmates. Nearly half of both boys and girls experienced physical violence at the hands of a parent or caregiver, and more than 90% of primary school students in a recent survey said they had experienced physical violence at school (Devries et al 2015, Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development, 2015) .

Experiencing physical, psychological, and/or sexual violence in school negatively impacts learning outcomes, attendance, motivation and concentration – effects that have been observed on every continent and in both developed and developing countries. This in turn has a long term impact on individuals’ health and well-being, as well as the wider community. In Uganda, Raising Voices developed and piloted the Good School Toolkit (GST) over seven years with teachers and students. The Toolkit is a whole school, evidence-based intervention in which two 'teacher protagonists' are trained. They in turn recruit other teachers, students and parents to committees. During a period of 18 months, they work together to implement low-cost activities to change the operational culture of the school and transform the power relationships between students, teachers, administrators and the community, with support from Raising Voices. In a Randomized Controlled Trial, use of the GST lowered the chances a student experienced violence from school staff in the previous week by 42% (Devries et al., 2017).

The GST has been implemented in 750 schools across Uganda – most of them primary schools. Due to successful implementation of the Toolkit at this level, Raising Voices elected to adapt the model and materials for use in secondary schools. As part of this process, Raising Voices conducted research with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine on the particularities of Ugandan secondary schools. There were two central findings: secondary school learners experience different types of violence (especially, more peer and sexual violence), and learners have greater agency. With these research findings, Raising Voices has created a Secondary Good School Toolkit, which is being adapted to the unique challenges and types of violence faced by adolescents, as well as the greater power they have to change their school's operational culture. In this presentation, Raising Voices will discuss research on the specific types of violence faced by secondary school students, the experience of adapting the intervention and learnings from the piloting phase, and plans to bring the Secondary GST to schools across Uganda.

Author

• Dipak Naker, Raising Voices