Improving schools for teachers and children

Teacher looking after class

August 2009: Education is Plan’s largest programme area, with projects in every country in which we work and teacher training is a key strategy of the campaign. Here are some examples of our work:

• As part of Learn Without Fear in Vietnam, Plan worked with teachers, parents and district education authorities to develop a teacher training manual on positive discipline. Children have already noticed positive improvements. One girl said: 'My teacher is different. If she sees two children talking she will come and sit with them or send them out of the class but not use violence.'

• In Ghana, Plan has worked closely with the Ghana Education Service to provide teacher training, promote a teachers’ code of ethics and install an effective way of monitoring how non-violent discipline methods are used across 184 communities.

• In Togo, one primary school teacher spoke of the impact of Plan’s training programme: 'I’ve just started to understand that corporal punishment is violence against children, and that we can find other ways of disciplining them … I did some training, and I began to understand that children aren’t adults, that they have different priorities, and that one has to be gentle with them.'

• Teachers are ideally placed to influence members of the wider community in order to stop violence outside the classroom too. In Colombia, Plan has taken up this idea and aims to provide training for 10,500 students, 670 teachers, 650 parents and 64 communities in conflict resolution and peace-building processes over a six-year period.

Often, Plan’s pilot programmes are so successful that they are used by governments at national level. For example, in El Salvador, Plan worked with the whole school community to create the Step by Step Manual towards School Coexistence and Student Participation, which the Ministry of Education has rolled out in all public schools in the country.   

Join the campaign!

Plan urges school management and staff, teachers and education authorities around the world to join our call for violence-free schools. By working together, we can stop the violence, hold the perpetrators to account and create safe and productive learning environments for both children and teachers.