Making Safe Schools Happen

April 4, 2022 Opinion

Children spend more time in the care of adults in schools and other educational settings than anywhere else outside of their homes, but often, schools — which have an important role in protecting children – can be sites of violence and abuse rather than spaces that challenge and resolve these problems.

A Systematic Literature Review of the Drivers of Violence Affecting Children: The Philippines, a 2016 UNICEF report, noted that in children’s
survey responses, physical violence was the most prevalent form of violence in schools perpetrated by adults and sometimes in the hands of other children, with verbal violence the second most frequent form.

Some forms of violence such as spanking, pinching, whipping, being made to stand under the sun or to squat shouting, and cursing are perceived as forms of discipline or natural reactions by teachers to children and sometimes peer-to-peer incidents, but the UNICEF study said these are forms of abuse and violence.

The 2016 National Baseline Study on Violence Against Children, the first-ever study of its kind conducted in the Philippines, said 80% of children and youth who reported incidents of abuse and violence in their lifetime cited the school, the community, and their homes, as places where they experienced abuse and violence. More boys, at 81.5%, and girls, 78.4%, reported this ordeal, the study noted.

Recognizing this challenge in schools, the Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Child Sexual Abuse (CPTCSA) is launching the Making Safe Schools Happen (MSSH) campaign, visualized through a backpack with three important pockets — the largest of which is filled with notebooks that represent several of the many laws about child protection; the next pocket has geometry implements that symbolize community-based services such as hospital-based child protection units, barangay offices and faith-based institutions including the CPTCSA’s services.

The most important pocket has crayons and pencils that represent how students can access the laws and services with the needed
information, teaching skills to put the information into practice, and building self-esteem to feel confident in accessing the services. These
tools for students are the most important part of making safe schools happen because the help system becomes moot if students cannot access them.

Apart from information on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child Articles 19, 34, 17, 12, and 13, and Presidential Decree (PD) 603, Republic Act (RA) 7610 and RA 7877 that focus on protecting children from abuse, the backpack has teacher training information to help them understand and recognize possible abuse and seek help from the Department of Social Welfare and Development and Philippine National Police.

This also includes training on how to talk with a child who discloses possible abuse and to know the support systems in place for teachers, children, and families.

Inside the backpack is the Department of Education (DepEd) Child Protection Policy, a code of conduct that each teacher must sign, along with teacher training on increasing awareness of the signs and symptoms that a child is being abused or needs help.

There is also a component that teaches parents these measures so that children can communicate their stories and feelings to them without them being misunderstood. CPTCSA executive director Zenaida Rosales said, “Making Safe Schools Happen was conceptualized to improve the implementation of laws and policies that provide protection and care for children, to make them confident and strong in understanding and accessing the services available to them.”

(This link is an example of CPTCSA’s MSSH campaign intervention Rosales said the campaign strengthens the CPTCSA’s resolve to make children understand the meaning of respect as against blind respect to adults and authority and to understand when they are being treated with respect and how they need to communicate respectfully.

She said respect is all the more important as students approach peer romantic relationships when they need to build empathy to increase their understanding of their feelings and the appropriate ways to act on those feelings.

“The campaign also teaches empathy, decision-making, and impulse control to build long-term violence prevention so that our students
today will not become the offenders of tomorrow,” said Rosales.

With the help of individuals and institutions, Rosales said the CPTCSA’s Making Safe Schools Happen campaign can bring students together with the child protection services to prevent and treat child abuse and violence for generations to come.