Coordinated school and community-based education and child protection strategies to minimize school drop-out and violence against children during COVID-19

• In Event: Life transitions inside and out: Children, adolescence to adulthood

Proposal

Violence against children and school drop-out go hand in hand, with children experiencing violence at increased likelihood of dropping out of school, and out-of-school children at heightened risk of experiencing violence. This vicious circle has adverse long-term and intergenerational effects on overall wellbeing and productivity. When children are out of school, whether due to individual factors causing them to drop out, routine school closures for holidays, or emergency situations like the COVID-19 pandemic, they are harder to reach with services to keep them safe and get them back in school. In response to the shutdown of schools due to COVID-19, the Bantwana Initiative of World Education, Inc. (WEI/Bantwana) is adapting its proven school-based early warning system to prevent drop-out into a hybrid school and community-based model with an integrated focus on prevention of violence against children. This presentation will share implementation research findings and early results and lessons emerging from the hybrid early warning system under adaptation through WEI/Bantwana’s new UNICEF-funded integrated humanitarian response and child protection program to mitigate the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on vulnerable children.
Due to a range of structural factors—economic instability, HIV/AIDS epidemic, climate and health emergencies, gender norms and harmful practices—Zimbabwe has recorded a 17% school drop-out rate (Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee, 2019). From 2016 to 2019, to disrupt pathways leading to school drop-out in Zimbabwe, WEI/Bantwana piloted an innovative early warning system (EWS) to identify at-risk students and promote their retention in school by linking them with appropriate services to address their multiple needs, including social asset and life skill building, psychosocial support and mentorship, educational, and economic strengthening support and referrals to HIV and health services. Pilot endline data and findings show that the EWS contributed to reductions in school drop-out rates and increases in school attendance rates, while cultivating new culture and practices of bringing together school management and teachers, members of the community, and learners to proactively look out for and support vulnerable children.
In the initial EWS pilot, violence against children was observed as an important driver of school drop-out associated with many of the same aforementioned structural factors. National statistics show that violence against children is common in Zimbabwe: 64.1% of females and 76.1% of males report experiencing physical violence by age 18, 32.5% of females and 8.9% of males sexual violence, and 28.7% of females and 37.5% of males emotional violence (National Baseline Survey on the Experiences of Adolescents, 2011). Many teachers working with at-risk children through the EWS were ill-equipped to detect and provide follow up directly with child protection prevention and response, however, so the EWS addressed cases of violence against children indirectly insofar as linkages to other supports could keep them in school and thereby reduce their exposure to violence.
WEI/Bantwana recognized the opportunity to build on the success of the school-based EWS for drop-out prevention by adapting it into a hybrid school and community-based model with an integrated focus on violence against children prevention in order to better mitigate both interrelated risks. The hybrid EWS uses school and community platforms and engages multiple actors from the education and social welfare sectors, as well as community members and children themselves, to monitor and support at-risk children from a holistic, preventive lens. Key to the success of the hybrid EWS was strengthening multi-sectoral coordination and improving bidirectional reporting in order to bridge the gap between the parallel reporting protocols and disjointed follow-up efforts of the education and social welfare sectors on the same cases. Fostering linkages between teachers and community childcare workers was essential for ensuring timely and comprehensive interventions that address intersecting root causes of violence against children and school drop-out.
The introduction of community-based platforms has also enabled the hybrid EWS to adapt to the COVID-19 context while schools are shut down. During the lockdown period, data shows an increase in sexual violence cases (National Case Management System Management Information System, 2020). Vulnerable children require continued community surveillance and support to meet critical child protection needs and to return to school. This presentation will share the iterative adaptation of the EWS and new strategies developed and tested for school retention and child protection through emergency settings.

Author

• Washington Jiri, World Education, Inc. / Bantwana Initiative - Zimbabwe