DepEd signs pledge with child rights groups to promote child-friendly public schools
As part of the commemoration of the 20th year of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Department of Education (DepEd) signed a pledge of commitment to promote child-friendly and safe education environment especially in public schools all over the country. The signing took place during the public launching of a baseline study on violence against children in public schools titled “Towards A Child-Friendly Education Environment” in Quezon City lead by the Council for the Welfare of Children (CWC). The study is a result of collaboration among Plan International, UNICEF, AusAid, CWC and the Philippine Women’s University. It offers a baseline study on violence against children in the public school settings and gives insight and evidence-base information to aid legislators, media practitioners and the public sector on the sensitive topic of violence against children (VAC). For their parts, DSWD Sec. Dinky Soliman and DepEd Sec. Bro. Armin Luistro expressed commitment and support to strengthen efforts at promoting child-friendly environment in schools. The study, conducted by the Philippine Women’s University (PWU), aims to fill the critical gap on the information about different forms of abuses and violence against children in the school setting. “One of the goals of a child-friendly school is to ensure that children are safe and healthy. As this report shows, many children do not feel that way. More than half of the children in the survey had experienced some form of violence in school,” says UNICEF representative Vanessa Tobin. “UNICEF supports the Department of Education in its efforts to strengthen mechanisms to curb violence against children in schools and pushes for the anti-corporal punishment bill’s passage into law,” she added. The integrated study on Violence against Children (VAC) shows the extent and types of abuse experienced by Filipino boys and girls inside the schools. Based on the study, aside from physical violence that result in injury, there are other violent acts such as spanking, beating, pinching or slapping, that have been tolerated or “socialized” as acceptable ways to discipline children. Instead of being looked at as a case of violence and abuse, bullying is oftentimes dismissed as simply petty quarrels between and among children. Further, the study shows that corporal punishment is also justified in the context of discipline especially if punishment is viewed traditionally as something commensurate to a child’s offense. Verbal forms of violence include cursing and shouting at a child, which have often been perceived as “natural reactions” to situations or normal expressions of anger. “A shattered confidence due to unrelenting insults by a teacher is no less an abuse than a bruised body inflicted by a fellow student. Children who suffer violence not only affect their ability to learn but oftentimes lose their interest and totally refuse to go to school,” says Michael Diamond, Country Director, Plan International. “When this happens, education, which is meant to open the doors of a bright future for a child, is taken away.” The Violence Against Children (VAC) study aims to bring information on the different forms of abuses and violence against children in the public school setting. It aims to 1) Describe the issue in schools from the point of view of boys and girls, parents, school management and school personnel in the selected research sites; 2) Identify factors that support or deter violence against boys and girls in schools in the selected research sites; and; 3) Recommend policy and program interventions to address VAC in schools, towards making schools more child-friendly.
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