Building better futures: On mission to safeguard Bangladeshi schools
In an increasingly volatile world, safeguarding our children has never been more critical. We must build secure and nurturing environments that protect the future generation
The British Council is set to convene a special summit on safeguarding for school leaders in Bangladesh based on the best international standards.
Embracing the latest guidance from world experts, the summit will enable leaders to commit their schools to best practices in safeguarding, giving a new level of reassurance to parents and children. While responding to core issues within the country, it is also part of meeting the global challenge.
Safeguarding: The global challenge
Unicef has a vision of a world where all children are free from violence, exploitation and neglect. It has three key aims: for all children to grow in a protective environment; for children at risk to receive targeted support; and for violated children to be helped (source: Unicef Child Protection Strategy 2021–30).
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With decades of progress under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, recent world trends present a worrying picture, as Covid-19 has had significant adverse impacts on children's education and safety.
Unicef reports that 1.2 billion children live in countries with complex emergencies with 34 million children currently displaced by natural disasters, putting them at risk of violence, exploitation and abuse.
Moreover, one in 10 children is in child labour, with 79 million of them in hazardous work. Violence against children is significant, with 1 billion children experiencing physical, emotional or sexual violence every year.
While the scale of global statistics is shocking, the specific situation of safeguarding in schools is equally distressing.
Safeguarding our students
A snapshot of safeguarding globally shows that 150 million students suffer peer-to-peer violence, and a staggering 720 million live in countries with no legal protection from adult violence at school. The practice of caning children continues to be a violent method of control in schools worldwide (source: Unicef, 2021).
Despite this backdrop, schools are places of safety for children, keeping the vulnerable away from exploitation and violence. Covid-19 closures exposed many to violence, child marriage or child labour (source: Unicef, Global Annual Results 2021).
Given this, keeping children safe from all forms of abuse remains a central focus of child protection. Safeguarding in schools subsumes child protection and encompasses governance and leadership, policies and procedures, reporting and referring, risk audits and registers, safer recruitment, case management and safety and security – all of which help create a culture of safeguarding.
With developments in digital learning and a wider interest in holistic education, safeguarding students covers all educational activities within and beyond school.
Shaped by the present
Statutory advances (under the Equality Act 2010 and the Children and Families Act 2014) have formed the basis of much progress in Bangladesh, alongside significant examples of best practices in NGOs and leading businesses. Organisations with global networks make consistent commitments to valuing and listening to children and ensuring safe employment practices. In this regard, Unicef has impressive evidence of action in Bangladesh against a very challenging backdrop as its recent data highlights:
Children (under five years) whose births are registered: 56%
Women (20–24 years) married or in union before 18 years: 51%
Children (5–17 years) engaged in child labour: 7%
Children (1–14 years) who experienced physical punishment and/or psychological aggression by carers: 89%
Source: Unicef, 2022
Alongside Unicef, the British Council in Bangladesh has identified key areas for advancement, notably the empowerment of girls and young women in rural communities. Islamic Relief has a framework with policies on safeguarding and child protection, people at risk and dignity at work, prevention of abuse, exploitation and harassment, and a code of conduct.
There is much still to do, however.
With 44% of unregistered births, there are millions of missing children, unidentified and under any safeguarding radar. This creates issues for tracking their progress and performance in education, as well as their health and well-being. Around half of the children with disabilities do not go to school, depriving them of education and social interaction and imposing a life of loneliness (Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, 2023). Only 35% of disabled children are enrolled in secondary school; those that do attend school have a two-year academic lag.
These deprivations are safeguarding issues. Unicef reports that nine out of 10 children have suffered physical or psychological punishment by parents and teachers, and millions have been subjected to abuse, violence and exploitation. Young people are married off prematurely or sent to work at an early age as a family survival strategy.
Unicef estimates around 7% of 5–17-year-olds have been child labourers, often in hazardous contexts, and there is a backlog of 23,000 legal cases involving children jammed up in the justice system.
Achieving impact now
Our long-term aim is to build safe, happy and successful schools to meet the country's evolving needs. Collaboration between the public and private spheres is key to meeting this ambition.
In terms of safeguarding, there must be urgency to our actions, with a haste to make things happen now. Setting an agreed standard for safeguarding protects children now as well as building a better future – and this is what the British Council Safeguarding Summit can achieve.
Safeguarding specialists are doing life-changing work with the means to achieve positive outcomes in months, not years. The Safeguarding Alliance has worked with governments and school systems globally to build country-specific national safeguarding systems. The aim is to get things in place at pace, using a four-stage framework and taking advice from these world experts at the forthcoming Safeguarding Summit.
First comes the need for an environmental scan of safeguarding in schools in Bangladesh to get a statistically significant picture of cultural awareness of safeguarding. This leads to a national framework for Keeping Children Safe in Bangladesh and a national safeguarding policy. Such a policy would be practically grounded in bespoke resources for use in schools.
Lastly comes the rollout of the policy, initially on a pilot basis, to build a secure national safeguarding inspection system with its own training section. To build such a system at scale, given the complexities of the education landscape, it needs a build-operate-transfer model. Training the trainer is key to creating a contextual grasp of safeguarding and its standards and implementing proven implementation strategies (source: The Safeguarding Alliance).
My school, Haileybury Bhaluka, will play its part as a hub for sharing strong practices, acting as a centre to support other schools across all sectors. We believe that collaborative approaches to raising safeguarding standards are imperative. The long-term success of a national safeguarding system can be complemented by the short-term impact of private-public partnerships.
These partnerships must have key pillars to create a culture of safeguarding: setting the standards with governors, owners and school leaders – producing policies and procedures that work in context and using case studies to shape practices for recruitment, reporting, and referrals.
And, additionally, creating an understanding of risk in education contexts via risk audits and registers. In building better futures, we move forward together.
Simon O'Grady is the Founding Headmaster of Haileybury Bhaluka, the first premier boarding school in Bangladesh. Having built outstanding schools on three continents, he draws on his leadership experience in a series of defining articles to reimagine education. A long-standing board member of The Council of International Schools, he influenced standards for safeguarding in COBIS schools worldwide and has advised the Child Exploitation & Online Protection Centre, UK.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and views of The Business Standard.
