‘I went there in an effort to help the child, but you can see there is corruption in the world’: Adults’ conceptualisations and enactments of child protection in schools in a challenging context

Abstract

Schools have the potential to be sites of support for vulnerable children, but can also be sites of violence perpetration. In this qualitative study we explore how adult school stakeholders in and around two public Catholic primary schools in Zimbabwe conceptualise and enact child protection. We analysed our findings in light of the protracted economic crisis in Zimbabwe; the current policy context for child protection; and the Covid-19 pandemic. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 18 adult education stakeholders in and around one rural and one urban school in the Harare Archdiocese, from October 2020 to January 2021. This comprised 12 school-level stakeholders, including teachers (N = 4), parents (N = 4), school priests (N = 2), and headteachers (N = 2), who were the main focus of this study, and a further 6 high-level education actors. We employed thematic analysis. Adults in this study placed considerable responsibility on children to protect themselves, with often unreasonably high expectations of children’s capacity to prevent abuse. At times they also blamed and stigmatised children, which was gendered, and particularly emerged around adolescent sexuality. Our findings suggest that this was linked to social norms around discipline, protection and gender, but in particular, the way these emerged in relation to the challenges of the context. Policy and interventions to promote child protection in schools in Zimbabwe should incorporate both an attention to the challenges teachers face in contexts of adversity, as well as address a tendency for adult school stakeholders to hold children responsible for their own protection.

Embedding violence prevention in existing religious and education systems: initial learning from formative research in the Safe Schools Study in Zimbabwe

“…However, our ndings suggest that additional training may be needed to equip intervention actors and existing change agents within schools with appropriate content, ethical and safety skills relevant to violence prevention. For instance, ndings highlighted the need for intervention content to be more childfriendly, and to not perpetuate harmful ideas, such as blaming children for abuse, as explore elsewhere (40). In addition, qualitative ndings, alongside prior literature (30,31), highlighted the challenges with the wider referral system in Zimbabwe and the di culties of integrating this with a school-based referral system.…”

“…The ndings also suggested that the current referral mechanisms for violence in schools face some challenges, including cases of abuse that were handled poorly that left individual staff feeling isolated in handling the case and that did not lead to positive outcomes for the child involved. As shown in the quotations in Table 2, this includes practical challenges a teacher experienced in supporting a student through the legal process (40), suggesting positive outcomes for children who report cases are challenging to achieve. < Insert Table 2 here (listed at end of document) >…”