Learn Without Fear campaign update

Plan's Learn Without Fear campaign aims to make schools safer for children

All around the world, Plan offices are participating in the Learn Without Fear campaign, which aims to make schools safer places for children to learn and reach their full potential.

Read on for updates from Vietnam and Nepal.

Vietnam

Plan Vietnam has produced an easy-to-use practical training manual about positive discipline, funded by Plan in Finland and Belgium. The manual is aimed at trainers working with parents and teachers to equip them with lessons and skills to help positive discipline methods.

As part of the child protection work that is taking place across eight Vietnamese provinces, techniques and training have been developed to show parents and teachers positive ways of disciplining children.

To inform the development of the manual, opinions were sought from education specialists, psychologists, teachers, parents and the government and so far, from the testing that has taken place, parents have already noticed a positive change in children’s behaviour when disciplined using these alternative methods.

Booklets aimed at parents and teachers will be developed in the coming year.

Learn more about Plan's work in Vietnam.

Nepal

In Nepal, 14% of school drop-outs can be attributed to fear of teachers, and corporal punishment is a common discipline method in schools.

The Nepalese Government has committed to making corporal punishment illegal, so Plan Nepal has teamed up with the Ministry of Education, UNICEF and Save the Children to make schools violence-free.

Plan staff in Nepal are aiming to make all educational institutions in Plan-supported areas violence-free zones by the end of 2011. From July 2009, any school or organisation seeking education-related support from Plan Nepal must commit to implementing positive discipline methods and all financing of education programmes is dependent on steps taken to end corporal punishment.

Plan and its partners are working with teachers, pupils, parents and school management committees to develop and implement school-based codes of conduct and provide positive discipline training for teachers.

Plan has also developed ways to measure and track changes in attitudes to corporal punishment, along with changes in behaviour and improvements in the ways schools discipline children.

Plan Nepal has also been very successful in gaining widespread media coverage on the issue of corporal punishment.

Learn more about Plan's work in Nepal.