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Safe Schools is the World Bank’s program to assist countries to design and implement sustainable safe school policies and practices. Safe and inclusive schools are one of the five pillars of the World Bank’s vision for the future of learning and a key aspect of RAPID Framework for learning recovery.
To support use of more effective approaches for mitigating school risks and to accelerate efforts for learning recovery, the program aims to provide practical guidance and resources to policymakers, practitioners, and school leaders and teachers.
The program also supports ongoing consultations, outreach, and partnerships with other organizations working in this area and key stakeholders as part of its effort to ensure a unified vision on promoting safe schools.
What are Safe Schools?
School safety is a critical contributor to positive student, teacher, and school-level outcomes. Schools are safe when all students, teachers, and staff can thrive in a welcoming environment that supports learning, health and well-being, and positive relationships. Schools are any setting in which learning occurs, be it virtually or in person, formal or informal, and includes the physical and remote spaces in which education takes place, as well as the non-physical aspects of the school environment, such as norms and values.
Five Measurable Characteristics of Safe Schools
School safety includes five measurable characteristics—each of which can impact the safety levels of students, teachers, and the environment in which the teaching and learning occurs.
Safe Schools Resources
The Safe Schools Program builds on existing knowledge and products developed and identified by the Bank as supporting safe school practices and supports collaboration with thematic areas both within the education Global Practice (GP) and with other relevant sectors.
The Safe Schools Program is in the process of developing a set of open-access global public goods in the form of resources for policymakers, practitioners, school and system-level leaders, and teachers.
The Safe Schools resources have been designed to provide guidance for supporting and sustaining safe school policies and practices through a review of global evidence, experience, and cross-sectoral stakeholder engagements with experts in the field.
Get in touch!
Want to learn more about Safe Schools? Write to us at Safe_Schools_Core_Team@worldbank.org to keep up with the latest news.
Step 1: Diagnose Risks to School Safety. Step 1 includes diagnosing risks to school safety by identifying local, regional, or national factors that can influence safety levels. Step 1 recognizes that school safety can be influenced by the country or regional context; community norms; and the relationships among schools, students, and teachers. School safety also can be influenced by unexpected shocks from natural hazards including those exacerbated by climate change, epidemics, or pandemics. Moreover, the local context can influence the physical, mental, emotional, and social well-being of an individual and impacts an individual’s growth. Step 1 outlines the critical factors that can be diagnosed at the country, regional, and/or school level and provides guidance on how to measure safety levels.
Step 2: Design and Implement Safe School Strategies. Step 2 includes synthesizing global evidence and experiences by outlining universal and targeted supports that can help education systems promote and improve school safety levels. Universal supports for safe schools are the (a) management practices, (b) teaching and learning (T&L) practices, and (c) physical learning environment (PLE). The available evidence highlights all three universal supports as key levers and strategies to address school safety. These three supports and the underlying strategies are correlated with enhanced school safety, but they are not sufficient to address all safety risks. In addition, targeted supports, typically executed through a tiered approach, may need to be designed and implemented to meet specific identified needs. Step 2 lays out practical, evidence-based strategies for implementing universal and targeted supports complemented by country case studies.
Step 3: Monitor and Evaluate School Safety. Step 3 includes emphasizing the need for monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of school safety levels and implementation efforts to adapt supports to changing needs. The Approach Note provides a brief overview of global M&E practices in the context of school safety and builds on the design and implementation country case studies to highlight how systems can monitor and evaluate their interventions. The guidance provided in step 3 is complemented by the Measuring School Safety PPT, which describes how education systems can diagnose, monitor, and evaluate safe school risks and practices.
To learn more, visit the Resources page.
Safe School Strategies and Outcomes
Safe schools can help education systems achieve the outcomes of enhanced learning, health and well-being, and positive relationships. For this, policymakers and practitioners can leverage school safety risks to inform the design of a tiered approach to school safety that includes both universal and targeted supports.
The Safe Schools program includes the development of open-access global public goods in the form resources for policymakers, practitioners, school and system-level leaders, and teachers. The resources focus on providing guidance for supporting and sustaining safe school policies and practices.
To learn more about the Safe Schools program, read the Approach Note: Global Guidance for Supporting and Sustaining Safe Schools.
School Safety Resources
Links to School Safety Resources:
- Approach Note: Global Guidance for Supporting and Sustaining Safe Schools
- The Role of Management Practices for Supporting Safe Schools
- The Role of Teaching and Learning Practices for Supporting Safe Schools
- The Role of the Physical Learning Environment for Supporting Safe Schools
- Measuring School Safety
Safe Schools Team
Co-Leads
Collaborators
- Janet Omobolanle Adebo
- Hafsa Alvi
- Patrick Biribonwa
- Steve Commins
- Amy Gautam
- Alicia Hetzner
- Luz Elizabeth Robinson
- Danielle Willis
- Jingzhe Wu
