INTRODUCTION

On any given day, more than one billion of the world’s children go to school. Whether they sit

in buildings, in tents or even under trees, ideally they are learning, developing and enriching their lives.

For too many children, though, school is not always a positive experience. Some endure difficult

conditions, like extremely hot or cold temperatures in the classroom or primitive sanitation. Others lack

competent teachers and appropriate curricula. Still others may be forced to contend with discrimination,

harassment and even violence. These conditions are not conducive to learning or development, and no

child should have to experience them. A school is considered “child friendly” when it provides a safe,

clean, healthy and protective environment for children. At Child Friendly Schools, child rights are

respected, and all children – including children who are poor, disabled, living with HIV or from ethnic

and religious minorities are treated equally.

A Child Friendly School is a school that recognizes and nurtures the achievement of children's

basic rights. Child Friendly Schools work with all commitment-holders, especially parents/guardians of

students, and values the many kinds of contributions they can make in seeking all children to go to

school, in the development of a learning environment for children and effective learning quality

according to the children's current and future needs. The learning environments of Child Friendly

Schools are characterized by equity, balance, freedom, solidarity, non-violence and a concern for

physical, mental and emotional health. These lead to the development of knowledge, skills, attitudes,

values, morals so that children can live together in a harmonious way. A child friendly school nurtures

a school-friendly child, support children for development and a school-friendly community.

At the schools, teachers are trained on child rights, while teaching methods focus on a child-

centered approach. Lessons for children include essential life skills aimed at keeping them safe and

building the skills they will need to fulfill their potential and contribute fully to society. In addition,

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 Child Friendly Schools bring together students and members of the community to develop and act on

ways to improve their school’s environment.

CFS environments build upon the assets that children bring from their homes and communities,

respecting their unique backgrounds and circumstances. At the same time, the CFS model compensates

for any shortcomings in the home and community that might make it difficult for children to enroll in

school, attend regularly and succeed in their studies. For example, if there is a food shortage in the

community, school-feeding programmes can provide children both with the nutrition they so critically

need and the incentive to stay in school and get an education. The CFS model also builds partnerships

between schools and the community. Since children have the right to be fully prepared to become

active and productive citizens, their learning must be linked to the wider community.  

The Education Section of UNICEF’s Programme Division introduced the Child Friendly

Schools (CFS) framework for schools that “serve the whole child” in 1999. AIR, (2009). Today, the

CFS initiative is UNICEF’s flagship education programme, and UNICEF supports implementation of

the CFS framework in 95 countries and promotes it at the global and regional levels. Bernard, (2003).

The framework for rights-based, child-friendly educational systems and schools characterized as

"inclusive, healthy and protective for all children, effective with children, and involved with families

and communities - and children" (Shaeffer, 1999). Within this framework:

 The school is a significant personal and social environment in the lives of its

students. A child-friendly school ensures every child an environment that is physically safe,

emotionally secure and psychologically enabling.

 Teachers are the single most important factor in creating an effective and

inclusive classroom.

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 Children are natural learners, but this capacity to learn can be undermined and

sometimes destroyed. 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.

 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.

 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.

Child-friendly school must reflect an environment of good quality characterized by several essential

aspects:

Inclusive of children

 Does not exclude, discriminate, or stereotype on the basis of difference.

 Provides education that is free and compulsory, affordable and accessible,

especially to families and children at risk.

 Respects diversity and ensures equality of learning for all children (e.g., girls,

working children, children of ethnic minorities and affected by HIV/AIDS, children with disabilities,

victims of exploitation and violence).

 Responds to diversity by meeting the differing circumstances and needs of

children (e.g., based on gender, social class, ethnicity, and ability level).

Effective for learning

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 Promotes good quality teaching and learning processes with individualized

instruction appropriate to each child's developmental level, abilities, and learning style and with active,

cooperative, and democratic learning methods.

 Provides structured content and good quality materials and resources.

 Enhances teacher capacity, morale, commitment, status, and income — and

their own recognition of child rights.

 Promotes quality learning outcomes by defining and helping children learn

what they need to learn and teaching them how to learn.

Healthy and Protective of children

 Ensures a healthy, hygienic, and safe learning environment, with adequate

water and sanitation facilities and healthy classrooms, healthy policies and practices (e.g., a school free

of drugs, corporal punishment, and harassment), and the provision of health services such as nutritional

supplementation and counseling.

 Provides life skills-based health education.

 Promotes both the physical and the psycho-socio-emotional health of teachers

and learners.

 Helps to defend and protect all children from abuse and harm.

 Provides positive experiences for children.

Gender-sensitive

 Promotes gender equality in enrolment and achievement.

 Eliminates gender stereotypes.

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 Guarantees girl-friendly facilities, curricula, textbooks, and teaching learning

processes. socializes girls and boys in a non-violent environment.

 Encourages respect for each others' rights, dignity, and equality.

Involved with children, families, and communities

 Child-centred - promoting child participation in all aspects of school life.

 Family-focused — working to strengthen families as the child's primary

caregivers and educators and helping children, parents, and teachers establish harmonious relationships.

 Community-based - encouraging local partnership in education, acting in the

community for the sake of children, and working with other actors to ensure the fulfillment of

childrens' rights.

Experience is now showing that a framework of rights-based, child-friendly schools can be a

powerful tool for both helping to fulfill the rights of children and providing them an education of good

quality. At the national level, for ministries, development agencies, and civil society organizations, the

framework can be used as a normative goal for policies and programmes leading to child-friendly

systems and environments, as a focus for collaborative programming leading to greater resource

allocations for education, and as a component of staff training. At the community level, for school staff,

parents, and other community members, the framework can serve as both a goal and a tool of quality

improvement through localized self-assessment, planning, and management and as a means for

mobilizing the community around education and child rights.

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 Effective and high-quality learning environments

A quality learning environment promotes high-quality teaching of relevant knowledge and skills

through instruction that is adapted to meet students’ needs and that encourages children’s active

engagement, rather than relying on traditional rote learning approaches (AIR, 2009). When teachers

encourage student to be actively engaged in the learning process and to do well, and when students are

presented with interesting learning opportunities, they are more likely to stay in school and succeed

academically (Lockheed & Lewis, 2007). Children’s active participation in learning reflects not only a

child-centred approach to pedagogy but also the principle of democratic participation. Further, in the

recently revised manual for CFS, UNICEF describes child-centred learning as follows (UNICEF,

2009): Learning is central to education and in line with the child-centred principle, the child as learner

is central to the process of teaching and learning. In other words, the classroom process should not be

one in which children are passive recipients of knowledge dispensed by a sole authority, the teacher.

Rather, it should be an interactive process in which children are active participants in observing,

exploring, listening, reasoning, questioning and “coming to know.” This is at the heart of the

classroom process in all Child Friendly school models, and it is critical for teachers to be well trained

in this pedagogy.

Factors that affect quality of education and Child Friendly Schools

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 Many schools serve communities that have a high prevalence of diseases related to inadequate

water supply, sanitation and hygiene, and where child malnutrition and other underlying health

problems are common. (WHO 2004c). The international policy environment increasingly reflects these

issues. Providing adequate levels of water supply, sanitation and hygiene in schools is of direct

relevance to the Millennium Development Goals1 on achieving universal primary education, promoting

gender equality and reducing child mortality. It is also supportive of other goals, especially those on

major diseases and infant mortality.

Lack of a safe and secure school environment, both within schools and for children who must

walk long distances to reach facilities

The framework, an intersectoral partnership to Focus Resources on Effective School Health,

provides the context for provision of safe water and sanitation facilities for children in schools. 

Creating a healthy school environment by provision of safe water and sanitation facilities within

schools, to improve children’s health, well being and dignity, is likely to be most effective where it is

supported by other reinforcing strategies.

Insufficient numbers of trained teachers and textbooks

Teachers are the key to making schools “child-friendly”. They are trained on children’s

participation in school development and on how to effectively pass on this knowledge and awareness to

parents, community members and the students themselves.

The most important factor affecting the quality of education is the quality of the individual teacher

in the classroom. There is clear evidence that a teacher’s ability and effectiveness are the most

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influential determinants of student achievement. Regardless of the resources that are provided, rules

that are adopted and curriculum that is revised, the primary source of learning for students remains the

classroom teacher. More critically, the importance of good teaching to the academic success of students

is intuitively obvious to any parent.

Once teachers, parents and community members are trained on child rights, they meet to assess

themselves, the school and community on what they lack and what needs to be improved. Most schools

organize activities for students, including Child Rights Clubs, which students run by themselves.

In addition, teachers are required to prepare individual files on each student, which include

information on the student’s socio-economic background as well as the student’s strengths and

weaknesses in school. This is considered one of the most important elements of the Child Friendly

School, since by having such information teachers become closer to each student and understand much

more about their individual needs or problems.

Lack of clean water and sanitation (e.g. separate toilets for girls and boys and hand-washing

facilities)

Water, sanitation and hygiene-related diseases are a huge burden in developing countries. It is

estimated that 88% of diarrhoeal disease is caused by unsafe water supply, and inadequate sanitation

and hygiene (WHO 2004c). Many schools serve communities that have a high prevalence of diseases

related to inadequate water supply, sanitation and hygiene, and where child malnutrition and other

underlying health problems are common.

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 It is not uncommon for schools, particularly those in rural areas, to lack drinking-water and

sanitation facilities completely, or for such facilities as do exist to be inadequate both in quality and

quantity. Schools with poor water, sanitation and hygiene conditions, and intense levels of person-to-

person contact, are high-risk environments for children and staff, and exacerbate children's particular

susceptibility to environmental health hazards.

Children’s ability to learn may be affected in several ways. Firstly, helminth infections,

affecting hundreds of millions of school-age children, can impair children’s physical development and

learning ability through pain and discomfort, competition for nutrients, and damage to tissues and

organs. Long-term exposure to chemical contaminants in water (e.g. lead) may impair learning ability.

Diarrhoeal diseases, malaria and helminth infections force many school children to be absent from

school. Poor environmental conditions in the classroom can also make both teaching and learning very

difficult. Teachers’ impaired performance and absence due to disease has a direct impact on learning,

and their work is made harder by the learning difficulties faced by the school children.

Girls and boys are likely to be affected in different ways by inadequate water, sanitation and

hygiene conditions in schools, and this may contribute to unequal learning opportunities. For example,

lack of adequate, separate and secure toilets and washing facilities may discourage parents from

sending girls to school, and lack of adequate facilities for menstrual hygiene can contribute to girls

missing days at school or dropping out altogether at puberty.

Children who have adequate water, sanitation and hygiene conditions at school are more able to

integrate hygiene education into their daily lives, and can be effective agents for change in their

families and the wider community. Conversely, communities in which school children are exposed to

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disease risk because of inadequate water supply, sanitation and hygiene at school are themselves more

at risk. Families bear the burden of their children’s illness due to bad conditions at school.

Beliefs and practices that discourage girls' enrolment

The deployment patterns also have implications for gender equity. Across sub-Saharan Africa,

the enrolment and retention of girls in school is lower than that of boys. The under-representation of

girls tends to be greatest in rural areas and among the most disadvantaged communities. While a

number of measures can be shown to have an impact on the retention of girls in school, one of the

important factors is the presence of female teachers in the school (Bernard, 2002).

Discrimination against orphans and girls within the education system and in classrooms

A study conducted by Case et al. (2004) revealed that orphans are less likely to be enrolled than

are non-orphans with whom they live. Consistent with Hamilton’s Rule, the theory that the closeness of

biological ties governs altruistic behavior, outcomes for orphans depend on the relatedness of orphans

to their household heads. The lower enrollment of orphans is largely explained by the greater tendency

of orphans to live with distant relatives or unrelated caregivers.

Poor health and nutritional status

Access to food, health care and education is recognized as a basic human right. This right is

enshrined in the Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s) through which all member states of the

United Nations have committed themselves to attaining universal primary education and eradicating

hunger. Despite the high profile given to education within this international agenda to eradicate

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poverty, UNICEF (2006) reports that in the poorest countries as many as 29% of boys and 35% of girls

are out of primary school and 70% of boys and 74% of girls are out of secondary school. These

children are excluded and invisible.

Children’s access to education and to learning is affected by the availability and quality of

schooling and by family characteristics such as socio-economic status and parental attitudes to

schooling. Access can also be influenced by child characteristics, such as aptitude, motivation and

behaviour, which can be negatively affected by poor health and nutritional status.

Proximate determinants of health consist of the biological mechanisms that directly affect the

health, growth, and development of children. These include dietary intake, illness burden, and exposure

to environmental contaminants or hazards. Environmental hazards encompass risks associated with the

transmission of infectious agents or exposure to noxious materials such as ambient smoke.

Transmission of infectious agents, which can in turn have a direct influence on children’s nutritional

status, occurs through a number of routes, including the air, particularly with the spread of respiratory

diseases; dirty food, water, and hands, which can cause diarrhea and other intestinal illnesses; skin and

soil, the conduits of skin infections; and insects, which can spread viral and parasitic diseases

(Scrimshaw et al. 1968, Mosley and Chen 1984).

Improving Child Friendly Schools

Strategies include policies to provide a non-discriminatory safe and secure environment, skills

based health education, provision of health and other services, effective referral to external health

service providers and links with the community should be put in place.  The framework provides this

context by positioning provision of safe water and sanitation among its four core components that

should be made available together for all schools.

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 It is therefore of some concern that a quarter of all children eligible to be in school are

malnourished (Galal et al., 2005) and that children in developing countries frequently carry an

additional burden of infectious diseases.

Subsidizing the education and health fees of orphans could become the main means of

promoting placement of orphans with extended families. The chief merit of this intervention is that it

supports investments in children without encouraging child labor. School subsidies for orphans who are

not in school would benefit orphans for four reasons: (a) subsidies are easy to monitor and less prone to

abuse or fraud than other direct subsidies; (b) education subsidies would give orphans the opportunity

to attend school when school fees are prohibitive; (c) in the short term, orphans would be better

integrated socially into the local community life; and (d) in the long term, orphans would have

marketable skills, making them more productive members of society. Subsidies for orphans and other

vulnerable children already enrolled in school would allow foster families to save on education costs

and increase their consumption of other goods and services, potentially improving the entire

household’s welfare. School subsidies have not yet been tried in the case of Africa’s orphans, although

provision for them exists in two ongoing World Bank operations in Burundi and Zimbabwe. However,

many countries have successfully used school subsidies to meet other goals such as increasing access to

education for girls. In Brazil, the Bolsa Escola Program tries to reduce child labor and increase school

participation through cash grants to families of schoolage children (7–14 years old). The families

receive the grants on the condition that children attend school a minimum number of days per month

(90 percent). Preliminary evidence shows that school attendance has increased, dropouts have

decreased, and the income gap between beneficiaries and nonbeneficiaries has decreased. The effect on

child labor, however, has been inconclusive because the municipality surveyed does not have a high

incidence of child labor (World Bank 2000a).

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 Education is the tool that can help break the pattern of gender discrimination and bring lasting

change for women in developing countries. Educated women are essential to ending gender bias,

starting by reducing the poverty that makes discrimination even worse in the developing world. The

most basic skills in literacy and arithmetic open up opportunities for better-paying jobs for women.

Uneducated women in rural areas of Zambia, for instance, are twice as likely to live in poverty as those

who have had eight or more years of education. The longer a girl is able to stay in school, the greater

her chances to pursue worthwhile employment, higher education, and a life without the hazards of

extreme poverty. Women who have had some schooling are more likely to get married later, survive

childbirth, have fewer and healthier children, and make sure their own children complete school. They

also understand hygiene and nutrition better and are more likely to prevent disease by visiting health

care facilities. The UN estimates that for every year a woman spends in primary school, the risk of her

child dying prematurely is reduced by 8 percent. Girls' education also means comprehensive change for

a society. As women get the opportunity to go to school and obtain higher-level jobs, they gain status in

their communities. Status translates into the power to influence their families and societies.

The presence of female teachers in a school can help to make the school environment a safer

place for girls. Many girls in Africa are forced to drop out of schools because school administrators are

insensitive to gender issues, including sexual abuse and intimidation (PANA, 2003). In addition, the

presence of females in positions of responsibility and leadership in schools is an important factor in

creating gender role models.

The hygiene behaviours that children learn at school, made possible through a combination of

hygiene education and suitable water and sanitation facilities, are skills that they are likely to maintain

as adults and pass on to their own children.

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School feeding programme as a means of improving Child Friendly Schools

Two main strategies have been used to improve the nutritional status, attendance rates and cognition of

school age children

1. The provision of meals and snacks for eating in school

2. Food for Education (FFE) interventions in which food given at school may be taken home.

These strategies are underpinned by hypothetical pathways that link the provision of school

meals with improved education access and achievement, in two ways. Firstly, educational outcomes

may improve through increased enrolment and time in school due to reducing the cost to the parent of

sending a child to school and benefits to the family from providing take home food. Secondly,

educational outcomes may improve through enhanced attention, cognition and behaviour resulting from

relief of hunger and from better nutritional status (if the quality and quantity of food is adequate and the

supply continues for some time).

Grantham-McGregor and Walker (1998) reviewed studies showing associations between current

nutrition and school performance (enrollment, attendance, achievement, classroom behavior, and

school drop-out). They found a large number of studies that showed children who were stunted,

anaemic, or iodine deficient had poorer school achievement levels and attendance than other children.

Fewer studies had examined the experience of hunger, missing breakfast, or poor dietary intakes but

most found associations with school performance.

In a more recent review of the evidence Grantham-McGregor (2005) notes that further

associations have been reported between experience of hunger and children’s psychosocial function or

behaviour, academic attainment and attendance. She points out, however, that most studies have failed

to control adequately for all possible socio-economic background variables associated with hunger,

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which are likely to independently affect children’s school performance. Rigorous short-term studies of

missing breakfast have generally shown detrimental effects on children's cognition whereas studies of

providing breakfast have shown benefits particularly in malnourished children. But classroom

conditions may modify the effects of breakfast on behavior.

Grantham-McGregor found that there have been very few longer-term studies of the effects of giving

school meals and nearly all involved breakfast. She notes that it has proved extremely difficult to run

robust trials of school feeding, partly because feeding children tends to be an emotional and politically

sensitive topic, which makes it difficult to have children in a control group. She found only one longer

term randomized controlled trial, conducted by Powell et al. (1998), which found benefits associated

with attendance and arithmetic performance. This study is reviewed further below. Less robust studies

comparing participants with non-participants or comparing matched schools have found benefits of

receiving breakfast but there was bias due to self-selection and schools may have been inadequately

matched. Grantham-McGregor concludes that most studies of giving breakfast have found benefits to

school performance through increased attendance and retention. However, many had serious design

problems, were short-term, and were not conducted in the poorest countries. She argues that in order to

advise policy makers correctly, there is an urgent need to run long-term randomized controlled trials of

giving school meals in poor countries and to determine the effects of age and nutrition status of the

children, the quality of the school, and the timing of the meal. She emphasizes that the special needs of

orphans should also be considered.

The study by Powell et al. (1998) demonstrated that hunger during school may prevent children

in developing countries from benefiting from education. Compared to school feeding programmes,

Food for Education (FFE) includes a broader range of interventions designed to improve enrollment,

attendance, community-school linkages, and learning. The United Nations World Food Programme

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(WFP) is the largest organizer of FFE throughout the world. In 2003 WFP provided food to schools in

70 countries, accounting for more than 15 million children. Once school feeding programmes have

been launched, complementary activities such as de-worming and HIV prevention education can

‘piggyback’ these programmes to maximise the benefits of food aid. (World Food Programme, 2003).

FFE involves the distribution of food to “at-risk” children (usually girls, orphans or other vulnerable

children) who attend school regularly as a stimulus to increase participation, and to help offset some of

the opportunity and cash costs of educating children. The food may be locally grown and purchased or

contributed by aid donors. Where FFE also includes food-for-work, targeted to teachers or parents

involved in activities to improve schooling outcomes, it can be used to boost efforts to improve both the

demand (enrollment and attendance) for education and the supply (quality) of education, which are of

course interrelated and mutually reinforcing.

Levinger (2005) points out, however, that to be effective FFE interventions must reflect local

education supply and demand realities. She argues that if such responses result in contextually

appropriate designs then FFE can be a powerful tool for development but warns that the potential of

FFE can only be realized if a full analysis of the supply and demand blockages is undertaken. For

example, where educational quality is high but demand low FFE can best be used to improve

recruitment, but where quality is low but demand high it needs to be used to modify what happens in

the classroom.

The importance of school feeding programmes is discussed by Levitsky (2005) who notes that

the most robust finding from the evaluations of these programmes is that they increase attendance and

asks why governments have not used this evidence to initiate more school feeding programmes for the

poor. Levisky argues that there is a need for more research to make similar links between school

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 feeding programmes and their long-term financial and social benefits in order to build cogent economic

and political arguments that will influence policy and funding decisions.

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Galal, O. M., Neumann, C. G. & Hulett, J. (2005) International Workshop on Articulating the Impact of

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