You are on page 1of 23

INTRODUCTION

On any given day, more than one billion of the world’s children go to

school. Whether they sit in buildings, in tents or even under trees, ideally they are

learning, developing and enriching their lives. For too many children, though,

school is not always a positive experience. Some endure difficult conditions, like

extremely hot or cold temperatures in the classroom or primitive sanitation.

Others lack competent teachers and appropriate curricula. Still others may be

forced to contend with discrimination, harassment and even violence. These

conditions are not conducive to learning or development, and no child should

have to experience them. A school is considered “child friendly” when it provides

a safe, clean, healthy and protective environment for children. At Child Friendly

Schools, child rights are respected, and all children – including children who are

poor, disabled, living with HIV or from ethnic and religious minorities are treated

equally.

A Child Friendly School is a school that recognizes and nurtures the

achievement of children's basic rights. Child Friendly Schools work with all

commitment-holders, especially parents/guardians of students, and values the

many kinds of contributions they can make in seeking all children to go to school,

in the development of a learning environment for children and effective learning

quality according to the children's current and future needs. The learning

environments of Child Friendly Schools are characterized by equity, balance,

freedom, solidarity, non-violence and a concern for physical, mental and

emotional health. These lead to the development of knowledge, skills, attitudes,

1
values, morals so that children can live together in a harmonious way. A child

friendly school nurtures a school-friendly child, support children for development

and a school-friendly community.

At the schools, teachers are trained on child rights, while teaching

methods focus on a child-centered approach. Lessons for children include

essential life skills aimed at keeping them safe and building the skills they will

need to fulfill their potential and contribute fully to society. In addition, Child

Friendly Schools bring together students and members of the community to

develop and act on ways to improve their school’s environment.

CFS environments build upon the assets that children bring from their

homes and communities, respecting their unique backgrounds and circumstances.

At the same time, the CFS model compensates for any shortcomings in the home

and community that might make it difficult for children to enroll in school, attend

regularly and succeed in their studies. For example, if there is a food shortage in

the community, school-feeding programmes can provide children both with the

nutrition they so critically need and the incentive to stay in school and get an

education. The CFS model also builds partnerships between schools and the

community. Since children have the right to be fully prepared to become active

and productive citizens, their learning must be linked to the wider community.

The Education Section of UNICEF’s Programme Division introduced the

Child Friendly Schools (CFS) framework for schools that “serve the whole child”

in 1999. AIR, (2009). Today, the CFS initiative is UNICEF’s flagship education

2
programme, and UNICEF supports implementation of the CFS framework in 95

countries and promotes it at the global and regional levels. Bernard, (2003). The

framework for rights-based, child-friendly educational systems and schools

characterized as "inclusive, healthy and protective for all children, effective with

children, and involved with families and communities - and children" (Shaeffer,

1999). Within this framework:

 The school is a significant personal and social environment in the lives of

its students. A child-friendly school ensures every child an environment

that is physically safe, emotionally secure and psychologically enabling.

 Teachers are the single most important factor in creating an effective and

inclusive classroom.

 Children are natural learners, but this capacity to learn can be undermined

and sometimes destroyed. A child-friendly school recognizes, encourages

and supports children's growing capacities as learners by providing a

school culture, teaching behaviours and curriculum content that are

focused on learning and the learner.

 The ability of a school to be and to call itself child-friendly is directly

linked to the support, participation and collaboration it receives from

families.

 Child-friendly schools aim to develop a learning environment in which

children are motivated and able to learn. Staff members are friendly and

welcoming to children and attend to all their health and safety needs.

3
Child-friendly school must reflect an environment of good quality

characterized by several essential aspects:

Inclusive of children

 Does not exclude, discriminate, or stereotype on the basis of difference.

 Provides education that is free and compulsory, affordable and accessible,

especially to families and children at risk.

 Respects diversity and ensures equality of learning for all children (e.g.,

girls, working children, children of ethnic minorities and affected by

HIV/AIDS, children with disabilities, victims of exploitation and

violence).

 Responds to diversity by meeting the differing circumstances and needs of

children (e.g., based on gender, social class, ethnicity, and ability level).

Effective for learning

 Promotes good quality teaching and learning processes with individualized

instruction appropriate to each child's developmental level, abilities, and

learning style and with active, cooperative, and democratic learning

methods.

 Provides structured content and good quality materials and resources.

 Enhances teacher capacity, morale, commitment, status, and income —

and their own recognition of child rights.

4
 Promotes quality learning outcomes by defining and helping children learn

what they need to learn and teaching them how to learn.

Healthy and Protective of children

 Ensures a healthy, hygienic, and safe learning environment, with adequate

water and sanitation facilities and healthy classrooms, healthy policies and

practices (e.g., a school free of drugs, corporal punishment, and

harassment), and the provision of health services such as nutritional

supplementation and counseling.

 Provides life skills-based health education.

 Promotes both the physical and the psycho-socio-emotional health of

teachers and learners.

 Helps to defend and protect all children from abuse and harm.

 Provides positive experiences for children.

Gender-sensitive

 Promotes gender equality in enrolment and achievement.

 Eliminates gender stereotypes.

 Guarantees girl-friendly facilities, curricula, textbooks, and teaching

learning processes. socializes girls and boys in a non-violent environment.

 Encourages respect for each others' rights, dignity, and equality.

5
Involved with children, families, and communities

 Child-centred - promoting child participation in all aspects of school life.

 Family-focused — working to strengthen families as the child's primary

caregivers and educators and helping children, parents, and teachers

establish harmonious relationships.

 Community-based - encouraging local partnership in education, acting in

the community for the sake of children, and working with other actors to

ensure the fulfillment of childrens' rights.

Experience is now showing that a framework of rights-based, child-friendly

schools can be a powerful tool for both helping to fulfill the rights of children and

providing them an education of good quality. At the national level, for ministries,

development agencies, and civil society organizations, the framework can be used

as a normative goal for policies and programmes leading to child-friendly systems

and environments, as a focus for collaborative programming leading to greater

resource allocations for education, and as a component of staff training. At the

community level, for school staff, parents, and other community members, the

framework can serve as both a goal and a tool of quality improvement through

localized self-assessment, planning, and management and as a means for

mobilizing the community around education and child rights.

6
Effective and high-quality learning environments

A quality learning environment promotes high-quality teaching of relevant

knowledge and skills through instruction that is adapted to meet students’ needs

and that encourages children’s active engagement, rather than relying on

traditional rote learning approaches (AIR, 2009). When teachers encourage

student to be actively engaged in the learning process and to do well, and when

students are presented with interesting learning opportunities, they are more likely

to stay in school and succeed academically (Lockheed & Lewis, 2007). Children’s

active participation in learning reflects not only a child-centred approach to

pedagogy but also the principle of democratic participation. Further, in the

recently revised manual for CFS, UNICEF describes child-centred learning as

follows (UNICEF, 2009): Learning is central to education and in line with the

child-centred principle, the child as learner is central to the process of teaching

and learning. In other words, the classroom process should not be one in which

children are passive recipients of knowledge dispensed by a sole authority, the

teacher. Rather, it should be an interactive process in which children are active

participants in observing, exploring, listening, reasoning, questioning and

“coming to know.” This is at the heart of the classroom process in all Child

Friendly school models, and it is critical for teachers to be well trained in this

pedagogy.

7
Factors that affect quality of education and Child Friendly Schools

Many schools serve communities that have a high prevalence of diseases

related to inadequate water supply, sanitation and hygiene, and where child

malnutrition and other underlying health problems are common. (WHO 2004c).

The international policy environment increasingly reflects these issues. Providing

adequate levels of water supply, sanitation and hygiene in schools is of direct

relevance to the Millennium Development Goals1 on achieving universal primary

education, promoting gender equality and reducing child mortality. It is also

supportive of other goals, especially those on major diseases and infant mortality.

Lack of a safe and secure school environment, both within schools and for

children who must walk long distances to reach facilities

The framework, an intersectoral partnership to Focus Resources on Effective

School Health, provides the context for provision of safe water and sanitation

facilities for children in schools. Creating a healthy school environment by

provision of safe water and sanitation facilities within schools, to improve

children’s health, well being and dignity, is likely to be most effective where it is

supported by other reinforcing strategies.

Insufficient numbers of trained teachers and textbooks

8
Teachers are the key to making schools “child-friendly”. They are trained on

children’s participation in school development and on how to effectively pass on

this knowledge and awareness to parents, community members and the students

themselves.

The most important factor affecting the quality of education is the quality of

the individual teacher in the classroom. There is clear evidence that a teacher’s

ability and effectiveness are the most influential determinants of student

achievement. Regardless of the resources that are provided, rules that are adopted

and curriculum that is revised, the primary source of learning for students remains

the classroom teacher. More critically, the importance of good teaching to the

academic success of students is intuitively obvious to any parent.

Once teachers, parents and community members are trained on child rights,

they meet to assess themselves, the school and community on what they lack and

what needs to be improved. Most schools organize activities for students,

including Child Rights Clubs, which students run by themselves.

In addition, teachers are required to prepare individual files on each

student, which include information on the student’s socio-economic background

as well as the student’s strengths and weaknesses in school. This is considered

one of the most important elements of the Child Friendly School, since by having

such information teachers become closer to each student and understand much

more about their individual needs or problems.

9
Lack of clean water and sanitation (e.g. separate toilets for girls and boys

and hand-washing facilities)

Water, sanitation and hygiene-related diseases are a huge burden in

developing countries. It is estimated that 88% of diarrhoeal disease is caused by

unsafe water supply, and inadequate sanitation and hygiene (WHO 2004c). Many

schools serve communities that have a high prevalence of diseases related to

inadequate water supply, sanitation and hygiene, and where child malnutrition and

other underlying health problems are common.

It is not uncommon for schools, particularly those in rural areas, to lack

drinking-water and sanitation facilities completely, or for such facilities as do

exist to be inadequate both in quality and quantity. Schools with poor water,

sanitation and hygiene conditions, and intense levels of person-to-person contact,

are high-risk environments for children and staff, and exacerbate children's

particular susceptibility to environmental health hazards.

Children’s ability to learn may be affected in several ways. Firstly,

helminth infections, affecting hundreds of millions of school-age children, can

impair children’s physical development and learning ability through pain and

discomfort, competition for nutrients, and damage to tissues and organs. Long-

term exposure to chemical contaminants in water (e.g. lead) may impair learning

ability. Diarrhoeal diseases, malaria and helminth infections force many school

children to be absent from school. Poor environmental conditions in the classroom

can also make both teaching and learning very difficult. Teachers’ impaired

10
performance and absence due to disease has a direct impact on learning, and their

work is made harder by the learning difficulties faced by the school children.

Girls and boys are likely to be affected in different ways by inadequate

water, sanitation and hygiene conditions in schools, and this may contribute to

unequal learning opportunities. For example, lack of adequate, separate and

secure toilets and washing facilities may discourage parents from sending girls to

school, and lack of adequate facilities for menstrual hygiene can contribute to

girls missing days at school or dropping out altogether at puberty.

Children who have adequate water, sanitation and hygiene conditions at

school are more able to integrate hygiene education into their daily lives, and can

be effective agents for change in their families and the wider community.

Conversely, communities in which school children are exposed to disease risk

because of inadequate water supply, sanitation and hygiene at school are

themselves more at risk. Families bear the burden of their children’s illness due to

bad conditions at school.

Beliefs and practices that discourage girls' enrolment

The deployment patterns also have implications for gender equity. Across

sub-Saharan Africa, the enrolment and retention of girls in school is lower than

that of boys. The under-representation of girls tends to be greatest in rural areas

and among the most disadvantaged communities. While a number of measures

can be shown to have an impact on the retention of girls in school, one of the

important factors is the presence of female teachers in the school (Bernard, 2002).

11
Discrimination against orphans and girls within the education system and in

classrooms

A study conducted by Case et al. (2004) revealed that orphans are less

likely to be enrolled than are non-orphans with whom they live. Consistent with

Hamilton’s Rule, the theory that the closeness of biological ties governs altruistic

behavior, outcomes for orphans depend on the relatedness of orphans to their

household heads. The lower enrollment of orphans is largely explained by the

greater tendency of orphans to live with distant relatives or unrelated caregivers.

Poor health and nutritional status

Access to food, health care and education is recognized as a basic human

right. This right is enshrined in the Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s)

through which all member states of the United Nations have committed

themselves to attaining universal primary education and eradicating hunger.

Despite the high profile given to education within this international agenda to

eradicate poverty, UNICEF (2006) reports that in the poorest countries as many as

29% of boys and 35% of girls are out of primary school and 70% of boys and

74% of girls are out of secondary school. These children are excluded and

invisible.

Children’s access to education and to learning is affected by the

availability and quality of schooling and by family characteristics such as socio-

economic status and parental attitudes to schooling. Access can also be influenced
12
by child characteristics, such as aptitude, motivation and behaviour, which can be

negatively affected by poor health and nutritional status.

Proximate determinants of health consist of the biological mechanisms

that directly affect the health, growth, and development of children. These include

dietary intake, illness burden, and exposure to environmental contaminants or

hazards. Environmental hazards encompass risks associated with the transmission

of infectious agents or exposure to noxious materials such as ambient smoke.

Transmission of infectious agents, which can in turn have a direct influence on

children’s nutritional status, occurs through a number of routes, including the air,

particularly with the spread of respiratory diseases; dirty food, water, and hands,

which can cause diarrhea and other intestinal illnesses; skin and soil, the conduits

of skin infections; and insects, which can spread viral and parasitic diseases

(Scrimshaw et al. 1968, Mosley and Chen 1984).

Improving Child Friendly Schools

Strategies include policies to provide a non-discriminatory safe and secure

environment, skills based health education, provision of health and other services,

effective referral to external health service providers and links with the

community should be put in place. The framework provides this context by

positioning provision of safe water and sanitation among its four core components

that should be made available together for all schools.

13
It is therefore of some concern that a quarter of all children eligible to be

in school are malnourished (Galal et al., 2005) and that children in developing

countries frequently carry an additional burden of infectious diseases.

Subsidizing the education and health fees of orphans could become the

main means of promoting placement of orphans with extended families. The chief

merit of this intervention is that it supports investments in children without

encouraging child labor. School subsidies for orphans who are not in school

would benefit orphans for four reasons: (a) subsidies are easy to monitor and less

prone to abuse or fraud than other direct subsidies; (b) education subsidies would

give orphans the opportunity to attend school when school fees are prohibitive; (c)

in the short term, orphans would be better integrated socially into the local

community life; and (d) in the long term, orphans would have marketable skills,

making them more productive members of society. Subsidies for orphans and

other vulnerable children already enrolled in school would allow foster families to

save on education costs and increase their consumption of other goods and

services, potentially improving the entire household’s welfare. School subsidies

have not yet been tried in the case of Africa’s orphans, although provision for

them exists in two ongoing World Bank operations in Burundi and Zimbabwe.

However, many countries have successfully used school subsidies to meet other

goals such as increasing access to education for girls. In Brazil, the Bolsa Escola

Program tries to reduce child labor and increase school participation through cash

grants to families of schoolage children (7–14 years old). The families receive the

grants on the condition that children attend school a minimum number of days per

14
month (90 percent). Preliminary evidence shows that school attendance has

increased, dropouts have decreased, and the income gap between beneficiaries

and nonbeneficiaries has decreased. The effect on child labor, however, has been

inconclusive because the municipality surveyed does not have a high incidence of

child labor (World Bank 2000a).

Education is the tool that can help break the pattern of gender

discrimination and bring lasting change for women in developing countries.

Educated women are essential to ending gender bias, starting by reducing the

poverty that makes discrimination even worse in the developing world. The most

basic skills in literacy and arithmetic open up opportunities for better-paying jobs

for women. Uneducated women in rural areas of Zambia, for instance, are twice

as likely to live in poverty as those who have had eight or more years of

education. The longer a girl is able to stay in school, the greater her chances to

pursue worthwhile employment, higher education, and a life without the hazards

of extreme poverty. Women who have had some schooling are more likely to get

married later, survive childbirth, have fewer and healthier children, and make sure

their own children complete school. They also understand hygiene and nutrition

better and are more likely to prevent disease by visiting health care facilities. The

UN estimates that for every year a woman spends in primary school, the risk of

her child dying prematurely is reduced by 8 percent. Girls' education also means

comprehensive change for a society. As women get the opportunity to go to

school and obtain higher-level jobs, they gain status in their communities. Status

translates into the power to influence their families and societies.

15
The presence of female teachers in a school can help to make the school

environment a safer place for girls. Many girls in Africa are forced to drop out of

schools because school administrators are insensitive to gender issues, including

sexual abuse and intimidation (PANA, 2003). In addition, the presence of females

in positions of responsibility and leadership in schools is an important factor in

creating gender role models.

The hygiene behaviours that children learn at school, made possible through a

combination of hygiene education and suitable water and sanitation facilities, are

skills that they are likely to maintain as adults and pass on to their own children.

School feeding programme as a means of improving Child Friendly Schools

Two main strategies have been used to improve the nutritional status, attendance

rates and cognition of school age children

1. The provision of meals and snacks for eating in school

2. Food for Education (FFE) interventions in which food given at school may be

taken home.

These strategies are underpinned by hypothetical pathways that link the

provision of school meals with improved education access and achievement, in

two ways. Firstly, educational outcomes may improve through increased

enrolment and time in school due to reducing the cost to the parent of sending a

child to school and benefits to the family from providing take home food.

Secondly, educational outcomes may improve through enhanced attention,

cognition and behaviour resulting from relief of hunger and from better nutritional

16
status (if the quality and quantity of food is adequate and the supply continues for

some time).

Grantham-McGregor and Walker (1998) reviewed studies showing

associations between current nutrition and school performance (enrollment,

attendance, achievement, classroom behavior, and school drop-out). They found a

large number of studies that showed children who were stunted, anaemic, or

iodine deficient had poorer school achievement levels and attendance than other

children. Fewer studies had examined the experience of hunger, missing

breakfast, or poor dietary intakes but most found associations with school

performance.

In a more recent review of the evidence Grantham-McGregor (2005) notes

that further associations have been reported between experience of hunger and

children’s psychosocial function or behaviour, academic attainment and

attendance. She points out, however, that most studies have failed to control

adequately for all possible socio-economic background variables associated with

hunger, which are likely to independently affect children’s school performance.

Rigorous short-term studies of missing breakfast have generally shown

detrimental effects on children's cognition whereas studies of providing breakfast

have shown benefits particularly in malnourished children. But classroom

conditions may modify the effects of breakfast on behavior.

Grantham-McGregor found that there have been very few longer-term studies of

the effects of giving school meals and nearly all involved breakfast. She notes that

it has proved extremely difficult to run robust trials of school feeding, partly

17
because feeding children tends to be an emotional and politically sensitive topic,

which makes it difficult to have children in a control group. She found only one

longer term randomized controlled trial, conducted by Powell et al. (1998), which

found benefits associated with attendance and arithmetic performance. This study

is reviewed further below. Less robust studies comparing participants with non-

participants or comparing matched schools have found benefits of receiving

breakfast but there was bias due to self-selection and schools may have been

inadequately matched. Grantham-McGregor concludes that most studies of giving

breakfast have found benefits to school performance through increased attendance

and retention. However, many had serious design problems, were short-term, and

were not conducted in the poorest countries. She argues that in order to advise

policy makers correctly, there is an urgent need to run long-term randomized

controlled trials of giving school meals in poor countries and to determine the

effects of age and nutrition status of the children, the quality of the school, and the

timing of the meal. She emphasizes that the special needs of orphans should also

be considered.

The study by Powell et al. (1998) demonstrated that hunger during school

may prevent children in developing countries from benefiting from education.

Compared to school feeding programmes, Food for Education (FFE) includes a

broader range of interventions designed to improve enrollment, attendance,

community-school linkages, and learning. The United Nations World Food

Programme (WFP) is the largest organizer of FFE throughout the world. In 2003

WFP provided food to schools in 70 countries, accounting for more than 15

18
million children. Once school feeding programmes have been launched,

complementary activities such as de-worming and HIV prevention education can

‘piggyback’ these programmes to maximise the benefits of food aid. (World Food

Programme, 2003). FFE involves the distribution of food to “at-risk” children

(usually girls, orphans or other vulnerable children) who attend school regularly

as a stimulus to increase participation, and to help offset some of the opportunity

and cash costs of educating children. The food may be locally grown and

purchased or contributed by aid donors. Where FFE also includes food-for-work,

targeted to teachers or parents involved in activities to improve schooling

outcomes, it can be used to boost efforts to improve both the demand (enrollment

and attendance) for education and the supply (quality) of education, which are of

course interrelated and mutually reinforcing.

Levinger (2005) points out, however, that to be effective FFE

interventions must reflect local education supply and demand realities. She argues

that if such responses result in contextually appropriate designs then FFE can be a

powerful tool for development but warns that the potential of FFE can only be

realized if a full analysis of the supply and demand blockages is undertaken. For

example, where educational quality is high but demand low FFE can best be used

to improve recruitment, but where quality is low but demand high it needs to be

used to modify what happens in the classroom.

The importance of school feeding programmes is discussed by Levitsky

(2005) who notes that the most robust finding from the evaluations of these

programmes is that they increase attendance and asks why governments have not

19
used this evidence to initiate more school feeding programmes for the poor.

Levisky argues that there is a need for more research to make similar links

between school feeding programmes and their long-term financial and social

benefits in order to build cogent economic and political arguments that will

influence policy and funding decisions.

20
References

AIR. (2009). UNICEF Child Friendly Schools programming: Global evaluation

final report. Washington,

Bernard, A. (2003). Review of Child-Friendly School Initiatives in the EAPRO

region (draft). Unpublished DC: Author.

Galal, O. M., Neumann, C. G. & Hulett, J. (2005) International Workshop on

Articulating the Impact of Nutritional Deficits on the Education for All

Agenda. Food and Nutrition Bulletin (UNU), 26(2)(Suppl.2).

http://www.ncpc.org/resources/files/pdf/school-safety/11964-

School%20Safety%20Toolkit%20final.pdf (June 14, 2011).

Human Rights Council. (2010). Annual Report of the Special Representative of

the Secretary-General on Violence Against Children, Marta Santos Pais.

New York: United Nations.

Lockheed, M. E. & Lewis, M.A. (2007). Inexcusable absences. Washington, DC:

Center for Global manuscript.

Ministry of National Education, Republic of Turkey. (2006). Preventing and

Reducing Violence in Educational Environments: Strategy and Action

Plan. Ankara: Ministry of National Education.

National Crime Prevention Council. (2009). School Safety and Security Toolkit:

A Guide for Parents, Schools, and Communities. Retrieved from

21
Osher, D., Kelly, D., Tolani-Brown, N., Shors, L, & Chen, C-S. (2009). UNICEF

Child Friendly Schools Programming: Global Evaluation Final Report.

Washington, DC: American Institutes for Research.

Pinheiro, P.S. (2006). World Report on Violence against Children. Geneva:

United Nations.

Travis III, L.F. & Coon, J.K. (2005). The Role of Law Enforcement in Public

School Safety: A National Survey. Final Report for the National Institute

of Justice. Unpublished manuscript.

UNICEF (2006). The State of the World's Children Report 2006: Excluded and

Invisible. New York: UNICEF.

UNICEF. (2009). Schools as Protective Environments In Child Friendly Schools

Manual. New York: UNICEF.

World Bank. (2000a). “Brazil: An Assessment of the Bolsa Escola Programs.”

Report 20208-BR. World Bank, Latin America and the Caribbean

Regional Office, Human Development Department, Brazil Country

Management Unit.

World Health Organization (2004c). Water, sanitation and hygiene links to

health. Facts and figures. Geneva.

Development.

22
Scrimshaw, N. S., C. E. Taylor, and J. E. Gordon. 1968. Interactions of nutrition

and infection. WHO Monograph Series 57, World Health Organization,

Geneva.

Mosley, W. H., and L. C. Chen. 1984. “An analytical framework for the study of

child survival in developing countries.” Population and development

review 10 (Supplement):25–45.

PANA (2003). “African governments neglect plight of pregnant school girls”.

Levitsky, D. A. (2005) 'The future of school feeding programmes,' food and

nutrition bulletin, 26: 286-287.

23

You might also like