Moving towards a child-friendly education environment

Lionel WIJESIRI

Ministry of Education, in partnership with UNICEF, recently launched the ‘Child friendly schools’ concept as the official framework to address disparities in quality and access in primary schools in Sri Lanka. In a presentation to education authorities, along with other key partners, Ministry of Education outlined an approach which seeks to improve the quality of education and schools for students, teachers and communities by mainstreaming child-friendly schools as the national framework to primary education.

The child-friendly schools approach is already operating in about 1,400 primary schools in Sri Lanka. This framework seeks to take it to 10,000 primary schools in Sri Lanka.

Years ago, UNICEF developed a framework for child-friendly educational systems and schools that are characterized as "inclusive, healthy and protective for all children, effective with children, and involved with families and communities - and children".

Making the classroom environment student-friendly

This framework reflects few important aspects. (1) A child-friendly school ensures every child an environment that is physically safe, emotionally secure and psychologically enabling; (2) Teachers are the single most important factor in creating an effective and inclusive classroom; (3) A child-friendly school recognizes, encourages and supports children's growing capacities as learners by providing a school culture, teaching behaviours and curriculum content that are focused on learning and the learner; (4) The ability of a school to be and to call itself child-friendly is directly linked to the support, participation and collaboration it receives from families; (5) Child-friendly schools aim to develop a learning environment in which children are motivated and able to learn. Staff members are friendly and welcoming to children and attend to all their health and safety needs.

If we, in Sri Lanka, can develop such child-friendly schools, they will not only help our children realize their right to a basic education of good quality but will do many other things - help children learn what they need to learn to face the challenges of the new century; enhance their health and well-being; guarantee them safe and protective spaces for learning, free from violence and abuse; raise teacher morale and motivation; and mobilize community support for education.

Fundamental rights

Child-friendly schools framework brings together the fundamental rights that are listed in the Convention on the Rights of the Child in six different concepts: (1) child-friendly schools are child-centred. (2) They are inclusive. (3) They are gender-equitable and celebrate all cultural backgrounds and languages. (4) They are effective - that is, in child-friendly schools children are learning and being educated. (5) child-friendly schools are protective, safe, healthy environments; and (6) they are characterized by democratic participation.

Four-dimensional approach

It is obvious, therefore, that the vision of child-friendly schools for educating children goes far beyond who gets the best score on the final examination. The mission insists that each and every girl and boy has the right to participate in her or his own learning in a safe, protective learning community.

This writer believes that the framework can be used for planning the transformation of our entire education system, one school at a time, with everyone’s participation, for the benefit of each and every child. This framework will enable each and every girl, boy, young child and adolescent to claim her or his right to education in a learning community that is child-centred, inclusive, and based on democratic participation.

In order to make this project a complete success, the policymakers must begin to think about the big picture - the entire country, or provinces of the country in combination, or a province. That is their role and their obligation. The educators, too, have an important role to play because they are responsible for the learning outcomes of children.

We often see that education policies work only when they take the classroom and the school into account. Policies and programmes can go wrong if they are designed for the whole country but do not support building capacity at the local level - that is, the level of the community, the school, and especially the classroom. The child-friendly schools approach can establish that common framework, especially when we examine it through a four-dimensional approach.

This type of approach will help the policy makers and educators to understand what it means to take a 'child-centred approach' in a child-friendly school - to keep their policies and their programmes focused where they need to be focused.

The first step should begin at the extreme left dimension by focusing on the girl and on the boy so that every child is included in the programme. For the ideal child-friendly schools concept, being child-centred and focusing on the child is critical. It is also important, however, that we talk about schools, since children learn about their rights in particular places, in the classroom and school. This is where one child interacts with many other children. It is also where the teacher has to plan for, manage and assess the learning needs of 20 or 30 or 40 or more children all at once, on a daily basis, for eight or nine months of the year.

As they move to the second dimension to the right, they need to focus on the entire school, where they can see children of all ages, all the teachers, the Principal and other school personnel, working together. These people are working together so that all children in every classroom can learn to read and write, do mathematics, develop critical thinking and life skills, and become good citizens of Sri Lanka and of the world community.

As the third step, they need to move out farther to the right see the school positioned in the community. This is where children live with their families. It is where their parents work and vote. This is where the Police have a central role in law enforcement and a desire to support the school community in its actions to be a safe child-friendly school within a safe community.

Finally, they need to move out even farther to the right for the fourth dimension to see the community in the context of the wider society and the nation. At this level, the national or provincial government provides the legal structures and finances for child-friendly schools to develop through legislation that Parliament enacts for the schools across the country. It is here that the Ministry of Education designs programmes and policies to support the development of a child-friendly school system. As we can see, what goes on inside the school is a microcosm of the larger society, that is, a small slice of the whole pie of society.

If they once again move back in to the classroom, they would note how each level of the system supports the learning of each child. This includes girls and boys who are disadvantaged, and who have learning disabilities. They too, have a right to claim the benefits of a quality education and child-friendly schools are inclusive.

Long-term process

As we return to focus on the child in the child-friendly school approach, we consider not only the children in school, but also the girls and boys who are not in school - those who have been excluded from school, those who have dropped out or have been pushed out, those whom the CRC insists also have an equal right to a quality education.

The four-dimensional approach reminds us that the work we do together to develop child-friendly schools is a complex enterprise.

The work is complicated, and we need to take each other’s perspectives into account as we plan future action. The implementation of the child-friendly school programme will be a long-term process which will require persistence, perseverance and patience to implement all the programmes and activities in each dimension. With this in mind the Ministry of Education will have to make a concerted effort in leading, managing arid providing support to all offices and schools involved, with the aim of making the implementation of this policy successfully and highly effective.