When it comes to quality education, safety matters.

Student potential for academic achievement is maximized when the learning environment is positive, safe, and nurturing with effective instruction. Their social and emotional development thrives when teachers and children have a voice in school affairs; and when there are effective avenues for communicating about, responding to, and preventing threats to safety. USAID's Reading MATTERS Conceptual Framework asserts that the best reading outcomes are achieved when children's well-being is nurtured and guaranteed.

*Image Credits: USAID Uganda Literacy Achievement and Retention Activity (RTI)*

Safety during COVID-19
COVID-19 has exacerbated underlying social and gender inequalities. Governments worldwide now also face the prospect of reopening schools, though not all students will have the ability to re-enroll. For learners who can return to school, learning loss will be just one of numerous challenges. Families have experienced increased stress and anxiety due to economic hardship. It will be more imperative than ever that teachers and school leaders collaborate with families to promote access to quality education that is safe, relevant, and promotes social well-being[1], particularly with a trauma-informed lens.

To gain some perspective on what this might mean, the Basic Education Coalition (BEC) Gender & Girls Education Working Group (GGE WG) consulted with several organizations that have worked with donors, governments, and communities to plan and sustain safe learning environments. While no situation is precisely the same in any school or in any country, here are some lessons these organizations have learned (in alphabetical order by country) around what fostering a safe home learning environment, as well as a safe return to school, might look like in these unprecedented times.

Afghanistan
When it comes to safety, the USAID-funded Afghan Children Reading (ACR) program, implemented by Creative Associates International, recommends the following:

Engage parents in children’s reading & social-emotional learning (SEL)
As stated in USAID’s Education Policy (2018), social-emotional learning (SEL) refers to a range of cognitive, social, and emotional skills that affect how children and youth manage their emotions, interact with others, and solve problems[2]. SEL is important to foster within both parents and children in order to develop and maintain a safe home learning environment. With the significant number of students across Afghanistan who continue to be out of the classroom due to primary school closure, Creative’s Afghan Children Reading program is working through various mediums, including radio, IVR/SMS, social media, and phone calls, to continue early grade learning and SEL at home. As part of this COVID-19 response programming, Afghan Children Read is sending gender-responsive tips to parents via SMS/IVR and online posters to help them support their children’s home-based learning and social-emotional learning. The tips include suggestions for parents to engage boys and girls in active and fun learning activities. Both mothers and fathers are encouraged to model effective listening, cooperation, and problem-solving skills to their early learners—all important to a safe home learning environment. Preliminary findings from ACR underscore that the tips are more effective when the content is locally-defined within distinct communities.

Liberia
Building on experiences from the Ebola epidemic and guided by the United Nations Girls' Education Initiative's (UNGEI) Whole School Approach to Prevent School-related Gender-based Violence (SRGBV), the USAID-funded Accelerated Quality Education for Liberian Children (AQE Liberia), implemented by Education Development Center/EDC, works with communities to address school-related gender-based violence and promote safe, equitable, and empowering learning[3] environments for students ages 8 to 15.

When working to improve safety in communities, AQE Liberia project staff advocate for the following approaches:

Measure, understand, reduce
As gender gaps and barriers differ across regions, contexts, and education levels, collecting data to inform activities is critical. For example, a Gender Analysis, Safe Learning Environment (SLE) Assessment, and/or a Rapid Education and Risk Analysis provide vital information to inform activities such as teacher training, site selection and rehabilitation, materials development, and community engagement. In Liberia, the SLE Assessment provided data on teacher and learner experiences relating to corporal punishment, bullying, sexual violence, school climate, health, and environmental hazards in and around the school grounds. Ongoing analysis of Parent Teacher Associations’ action plans can also help the community and the project refine content and approaches to implementation to increase the likelihood of success.
Build school-family-community partnerships using a multi-sectoral approach
School leadership and community engagement are critical to designing equitable, safe, and empowering learning environments. Through training, action planning and discussion, key stakeholders (including officials from various Ministries such as Education, Health, Gender, etc., PTA members, law enforcement, community social and health workers, county gender coordinators, and traditional leaders) learn about issues in their communities, as well as support and services available to them locally. And, more importantly, these activities put higher-level decision makers in the same room with community members, helping to build consensus about practical ways to promote safety.

Malawi
World Vision is drawing from the experience in 2014 during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, when schools were closed for eight months in Sierra Leone and girls were greatly affected when schools reopened. During that time, teenage pregnancy rates doubled by some accounts, with 11,000 adolescent students becoming pregnant[4]. To support girls and ensure their safety, World Vision is implementing the Safe and Nurturing Schools (SNS) program in one area in Nkhata Bay in the north of Malawi to prevent and respond to school-related gender-based violence. The program engages teachers, students, and community members (such as school management committees, PTAs, and faith leaders) in ongoing group education sessions to dialogue about social norms that are not only barriers to young mothers' re-entry but the safety of all girls and boys. This type of ongoing discussion forum will be especially critical during COVID-19 and once schools reopen.

Specifically, World Vision Malawi will be concentrating on the following to ensure all girls and boys are returning to school and learning:

Remove barriers to reentry
Collaboration between ministries and communities is key to removing barriers to reentry. In Malawi, World Vision will facilitate collaboration between the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology, the Ministry of Gender, Children, and Social welfare, and communities to support a re-admission policy that allows young mothers to re-enroll in school to continue their education. Safe and Nurturing Schools student clubs, teacher groups, and community groups (especially trusted mothers’ groups and faith groups), will be instrumental in reinforcing this policy to ensure the safety of all students and reduce barriers to young mothers' re-entry.
Encourage positive discipline and gender-sensitive pedagogy
Another important component of safe learning environments is training teachers in positive discipline and gender-sensitive pedagogy[5]. World Vision Malawi will continue training teachers in positive discipline as part of the Safe and Nurturing Schools program, building off of evidence from the Good School Toolkit Program in Uganda[6].

Tanzania
When working to improve safety for students, the USAID/Tanzania Tusome Pamoja Project, implemented by RTI International, encourages a focus on the following:

Build social-emotional learning (SEL) in teachers
As a pivot to COVID-19 the USAID/Tanzania Tusome Pamoja Project focused on four pillars of school safety through a remote support program with teachers. Before COVID reached Tanzania, Tusome Pamoja had engaged a cohort of teachers from the Iringa District in a co-creation process to review, adapt, and select both teacher and student-based activities that promote SEL, social classrooms, and positive and supportive school climates. When COVID reached Tanzania, Tusome Pamoja began a virtual co-creation with the same teachers using a mobile learning platform, Cell-Ed. For ten weeks, teachers engaged with this virtual content and learned what they can do in their classrooms to ensure positive and safe learning environments, much of which focus on classroom management practices and teachers’ SEL and well-being. Teachers’ own social and emotional competencies must be developed and cared for in order for them to be ready, able, and willing to address those of their students and to serve as champions of safety in their schools and classrooms.

*Image Credits: USAID/Tanzania Tusome Pamoja Project (RTI)*

Uganda
When planning for the recovery phase of the COVID-19 lockdown, the USAID/Uganda Literacy Achievement and Retention Activity (USAID/LARA), implemented by RTI International, recommends the following:

Assess the safety risks
Conducting a collaborative school mapping risk assessment helps to identify safety risks in and around the school. Potential risks may include stigma, discrimination, and bullying between students. Based on learning from the HIV and AIDS pandemic, risk assessments can be led by the school governance body (including students, caregivers, teachers, local actors, and faith leaders) and are essential to adapt approaches to the current context.
Engage teachers, learners, and parents in SEL Activities
The USAID/LARA program highlights the importance of engaging teachers in the change process. To nourish SEL in students, we must prioritize SEL in teachers so that they are ready to support their students as they grow and develop. During school closures, helping parents to support their children’s continued learning is critical for mitigating school drop-out and learning loss. At the same time, parents and their children can benefit from practical tips to support their SEL, wellbeing, and overall safety.

Looking ahead
All students have the right to a safe and equitable learning environment and, while safety matters all the time, it is particularly essential during and after an emergency. As governments shift their focus and resources to reopening schools and, in some cases, providing virtual or blended learning options, it is imperative that the focus on safety not be lost. This focus on safety, and the provision of safety measures, can only be successful if it includes a gender lens. Coordination will be essential across sectors and between Ministry officials, school administrators, teachers, parents, and community leaders. Only then will we be able to mitigate the inequalities and safety issues exacerbated by emergencies.

Engaging with this blog
We hope these shared recommendations will help to inform school reopening plans and promote a much-needed emphasis on safety. We also realize the benefit of gleaning expertise from the broader development community, and we invite you to join the conversation. Please take a moment to leave a comment or question on this topic below, including reflections, lessons learned, case studies, or best practices to promote safety in the home and school.

Who we are
The Basic Education Coalition (BEC) is a group of leading US-based organizations and academic institutions working together to promote global peace and prosperity through education. By leveraging our collective technical expertise and combining advocacy efforts, BEC members raise a unified voice to ensure US policymakers support and strengthen education for the developing world. Over the past six months, BEC’s Gender and Girls Education Working Group (GGE WG) has met regularly through a series of virtual learning exchanges. Safety was the first of three themes we tackled and, as a working group, we shared best practices and common challenges to promoting safety during this pandemic and beyond. As a group of local and global implementers, we are committed to sharing knowledge, experiences, and promising approaches about what works with the broader development community via this blog post.

A special thanks to our contributors (in alphabetical order, *denotes key authors):

Alisa Phillips (World Vision)*
Amy Deal (Education Development Center)
Audrey Spencer (Chemonics International, BEC Gender & Girls Education Co-Chair)
Elizabeth Randolph (RTI International)
Hannah Kuntz (Education Development Center)*
Hassan Mulusi (Raising Voices)
Hope Wambi (Raising Voices)
Janet Shriberg (Creative Associates International, BEC Gender & Girls Education Co-Chair)*
Judith Oki (Education Development Center)
Julianne Norman (RTI International)
Lorpu Manneh (Ministry of Education Liberia)
Mary Cummings (Education Development Center)
Mary Sugrue (Education Development Center, BEC Gender & Girls Education Co-Chair)*
Paige Morency-Notario (Basic Education Coalition)*
Takudzwa Kanyangarara (United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative—UNGEI)
Yolande Miller-Grandvaux (FHI 360)

References
[1] World Bank (2019). Ending Learning Poverty: What Will It Take? World Bank, Washington, DC. License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.
[2] USAID (2018). USAID Education Policy.
[3] UNGEI. [n.d.] A whole school approach to prevent school-related gender-based violence.
[4] Bandiera et al (2018). The Economic Lives of Young Women in the Time of Ebola: Lessons from an Empowerment Program. UNFPA (2018). Recovering from the Ebola Virus Disease: Rapid Assessment of Pregnant Adolescent Girls in Sierra Leone.
[5] World Vision (April 2020). Baseline Survey for Safe & Nurturing Schools. Malawi Institute of Education.
[6]Knight, L., Allen, E., Mirembe, A. et al (2018). Implementation of the Good School Toolkit in Uganda: a quantitative process evaluation of a successful violence prevention program. BMC Public Health 18, 608.