Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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
Others lack competent teachers and appropriate curricula. Still others may be
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.
achievement of children's basic rights. Child Friendly Schools work with all
many kinds of contributions they can make in seeking all children to go to school,
quality according to the children's current and future needs. The learning
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values, morals so that children can live together in a harmonious way. A child
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
CFS environments build upon the assets that children bring from their
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.
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
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programme, and UNICEF supports implementation of the CFS framework in 95
countries and promotes it at the global and regional levels. Bernard, (2003). The
characterized as "inclusive, healthy and protective for all children, effective with
children, and involved with families and communities - and children" (Shaeffer,
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
families.
children are motivated and able to learn. Staff members are friendly and
welcoming to children and attend to all their health and safety needs.
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Child-friendly school must reflect an environment of good quality
Inclusive of children
Respects diversity and ensures equality of learning for all children (e.g.,
violence).
children (e.g., based on gender, social class, ethnicity, and ability level).
methods.
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Promotes quality learning outcomes by defining and helping children learn
water and sanitation facilities and healthy classrooms, healthy policies and
Helps to defend and protect all children from abuse and harm.
Gender-sensitive
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Involved with children, families, and communities
the community for the sake of children, and working with other actors to
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
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
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Effective and high-quality learning environments
knowledge and skills through instruction that is adapted to meet students’ needs
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
follows (UNICEF, 2009): Learning is central to education and in line with the
and learning. In other words, the classroom process should not be one in which
“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.
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Factors that affect quality of education and Child Friendly Schools
related to inadequate water supply, sanitation and hygiene, and where child
malnutrition and other underlying health problems are common. (WHO 2004c).
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
School Health, provides the context for provision of safe water and sanitation
children’s health, well being and dignity, is likely to be most effective where it is
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Teachers are the key to making schools “child-friendly”. They are trained 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
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
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
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
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Lack of clean water and sanitation (e.g. separate toilets for girls and boys
unsafe water supply, and inadequate sanitation and hygiene (WHO 2004c). Many
inadequate water supply, sanitation and hygiene, and where child malnutrition and
exist to be inadequate both in quality and quantity. Schools with poor water,
are high-risk environments for children and staff, and exacerbate children's
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
can also make both teaching and learning very difficult. Teachers’ impaired
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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.
water, sanitation and hygiene conditions in schools, and this may contribute to
secure toilets and washing facilities may discourage parents from sending girls to
school, and lack of adequate facilities for menstrual hygiene can contribute to
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.
themselves more at risk. Families bear the burden of their children’s illness due to
The deployment patterns also have implications for gender equity. Across
sub-Saharan Africa, the enrolment and retention of girls in school is lower than
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).
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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
through which all member states of the United Nations have committed
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.
economic status and parental attitudes to schooling. Access can also be influenced
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by child characteristics, such as aptitude, motivation and behaviour, which can be
that directly affect the health, growth, and development of children. These include
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
environment, skills based health education, provision of health and other services,
effective referral to external health service providers and links with the
positioning provision of safe water and sanitation among its four core components
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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
Subsidizing the education and health fees of orphans could become the
main means of promoting placement of orphans with extended families. The chief
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
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
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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
Education is the tool that can help break the pattern of gender
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
school and obtain higher-level jobs, they gain status in their communities. Status
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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
sexual abuse and intimidation (PANA, 2003). In addition, the presence of females
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.
Two main strategies have been used to improve the nutritional status, attendance
2. Food for Education (FFE) interventions in which food given at school may be
taken home.
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.
cognition and behaviour resulting from relief of hunger and from better nutritional
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status (if the quality and quantity of food is adequate and the supply continues for
some time).
large number of studies that showed children who were stunted, anaemic, or
iodine deficient had poorer school achievement levels and attendance than other
breakfast, or poor dietary intakes but most found associations with school
performance.
that further associations have been reported between experience of hunger and
attendance. She points out, however, that most studies have failed to control
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
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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-
breakfast but there was bias due to self-selection and schools may have been
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
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
Programme (WFP) is the largest organizer of FFE throughout the world. In 2003
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million children. Once school feeding programmes have been launched,
‘piggyback’ these programmes to maximise the benefits of food aid. (World Food
(usually girls, orphans or other vulnerable children) who attend school regularly
and cash costs of educating children. The food may be locally grown and
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
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
(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
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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
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References
http://www.ncpc.org/resources/files/pdf/school-safety/11964-
National Crime Prevention Council. (2009). School Safety and Security Toolkit:
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Osher, D., Kelly, D., Tolani-Brown, N., Shors, L, & Chen, C-S. (2009). UNICEF
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
UNICEF (2006). The State of the World's Children Report 2006: Excluded and
Management Unit.
Development.
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Scrimshaw, N. S., C. E. Taylor, and J. E. Gordon. 1968. Interactions of nutrition
Geneva.
Mosley, W. H., and L. C. Chen. 1984. “An analytical framework for the study of
review 10 (Supplement):25–45.
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