A Whole School Approach to Prevent School-related Gender-based Violence: Minimum Standards and Monitoring Framework 

Preventing and responding to SRGBV requires a holistic approach that addresses the drivers and root causes of violence at both the school and the community levels. The purpose of this guide is to present a set of minimum standards for a whole school approach to prevent and respond to school-related gender-based violence (SRGBV) and a monitoring framework to measure the effectiveness of the approach. This guide is divided into three sections. Section 1 introduces the conceptual framework and theory of change, and provides the context for the whole school approach and established indicators. Section 2 presents the whole school approach, which includes eight minimum standard elements. Section 3 provides guidance on monitoring, how to measure the whole school approach, indicators for monitoring, and the ethical and safety considerations for conducting research with children and adults. This guide can be used by education ministries, education authorities, schools, and non-governmental organizations to guide SRGBV prevention and response actions with a monitoring approach that allows the tracking of results and outcomes. 

Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) and Its Implications for Protecting Children Online 

While digital solutions provide huge opportunities for sustaining and promoting children’s rights, these same tools may also increase children’s exposure to online risks. This technical note sets out some of the key priorities and recommendations on how to mitigate those risks and promote positive online experiences for children. Not all risks will translate into actual harm, but children facing other issues in their lives may be more vulnerable. It is important that measures to mitigate risks should be balanced with children’s rights to freedom of expression, access to information, and privacy. Keeping children informed and engaged and empowering them with the skills to use the internet safely is a critical line of defense. 

Disability Inclusive Education Toolkit 

This toolkit provides guidance and resources for integrating disability into the USAID program cycle. The toolkit consists of the six main topics: country and regional strategic planning, project and activity design, project and activity implementation, monitoring, and evaluation, learning, and adapting, and event accessibility. How-To Note Disability Inclusive Education: Annex B may be used to guide USAID staff and partners in identifying opportunities to promote education programs, projects, and activities that are inclusive of students with disabilities beginning at the CDCS stage.

Developing High-Quality Pre-Primary Programs: USAID Education How-To Note

This How-to Note is written to support USAID Mission staff around the world in analyzing the preprimary landscape in their context and designing pre-primary activities. Specifically, it offers guidance on how to: systematically examine the pre-primary landscape, from policy and systems-level consideration to the on-the-ground reality; identify the relevant stakeholders in each context’s pre-primary sub-sector and ensure USAID’s activities align with and support relevant existing initiatives and programs; analyze the opportunities for USAID to engage in the pre-primary sector and determine what types of activities would offer the most value; and define the components of a high-quality pre-primary provision to inform the design of pre-primary activities, and/or the integration of pre-primary elements into activities with a broader scope.

How to Integrate Social and Emotional Learning in USAID Basic Education Programs: USAID Education How-To Note

Social and emotional skills are a set of cognitive, social, and emotional competencies that children, youth, and adults can learn that allow them to understand and manage their emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions. This How-To-Note aims to provide guidance on how to include and integrate skills-based SEL across the USAID program cycle into basic education programs, which serve children and youth (including adolescents) with a variety of formal and informal education programs, including youth workforce programs. 

School-Related Gender-Based Violence Measurement Toolkit

School-related gender-based violence is a complex social problem rooted in widely held gender norms and practices that enable certain groups of people to have privileges and power, while disadvantaging others on the basis of their sex, sexuality, or gender identity. These gender norms and practices are often carried out and reinforced in schools, resulting in a school climate that can perpetuate inequalities, normalize violence, and compromise students’ opportunities to learn. This toolkit delivers practical guidance and resources for measuring the prevalence and extent of students’ experiences of school-related gender-based violence (SRGBV), and provides methods for assessing key risk factors and drivers of SRGBV. This toolkit is divided into 4 chapters and provides the foundation, describes the conceptual framework, outlines the ethical and safety guidelines, and describes an SRGBV survey.  

Global Guidance on Addressing School-Related Gender-Based Violence

Gender-based violence (GBV) can occur in and around schools, as well as on the way to or from schools. Social media, email, and mobile phones are used to perpetrate violence through new mediums, such as cyber-bullying, online grooming, and trolling. There are new locales for this abuse (e.g. in online chat rooms) that overlap and reinforce SRGBV on and beyond the school grounds. SRGBV violates children’s fundamental human rights and is a form of gender discrimination. Children and young people who are perceived as resisting, or as not fitting into traditional or binary gender norms, are at high risk of violence. Children have the right to be protected from all forms of violence, including in their school lives. The Global Guidance provides key information to governments, policy-makers, teachers, practitioners, and civil society who wish to take concrete action against SRGBV. It introduces approaches, methodologies, tools, and resources that have shown positive results in preventing and responding to SRGBV.