Jenny Parkes

School Violence, Mental Health, and Educational Performance in Uganda

BACKGROUND: Violence against children from school staff is anecdotally common in low- and middle-income countries, but data on prevalence and associations with mental health and educational outcomes are lacking. METHODS: We report data from a cross-sectional survey conducted in June and July 2012 in Luwero District, Uganda. Forty-two primary schools representing 80% of students in the district were randomly selected; 100% agreed to participate. The International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect Child Abuse Screening Tool—Child Institutional; Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire; and reading, spelling, and math tests were administered. We present descriptive statistics and logistic regression models, accounting for the complex sampling scheme used in the survey. RESULTS: We surveyed 3706 students and 577 school staff members; 93.3% (SE 1.0%) of boys and 94.2% (SE 1.6%) of girls attending primary school reported lifetime experience of physical violence from a school staff member, and >50% reported experience in the past week. Past-week physical violence was associated with increased odds of poor mental health and, for girls, double the odds of poor educational performance (adjusted odds ratio = 1.78, 95% confidence interval = 1.19–2.66). For boys, significant interactions were present. CONCLUSIONS: Despite a ban on corporal punishment in Ugandan schools since 1997, the use of violence against students is widespread and associated with poor mental health and educational performance. School violence may be an important but overlooked contributor to disease burden and poor educational performance in low- and middle-income settings.

The Good Schools Toolkit to prevent violence against children in Ugandan primary schools: study protocol for a cluster randomised controlled trial

BackgroundWe aim to evaluate the effectiveness of the Good School Toolkit, developed by Raising Voices, in preventing violence against children attending school and in improving child mental health and educational outcomes.Methods/designWe are conducting a two-arm cluster randomised controlled trial with parallel assignment in Luwero District, Uganda. We will also conduct a qualitative study, a process evaluation and an economic evaluation. A total of 42 schools, representative of Luwero District, Uganda, were allocated to receive the Toolkit plus implementation support, or were allocated to a wait-list control condition. Our main analysis will involve a cross-sectional comparison of the prevalence of past-week violence from school staff as reported by children in intervention and control primary schools at follow-up.At least 60 children per school and all school staff members will be interviewed at follow-up. Data collection involves a combination of mobile phone-based, interviewer-completed questionnaires and paper-and-pen educational tests. Survey instruments include the ISPCAN Child Abuse Screening Tools to assess experiences of violence; the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire to measure symptoms of common childhood mental disorders; and word recognition, reading comprehension, spelling, arithmetic and sustained attention tests adapted from an intervention trial in Kenya.DiscussionTo our knowledge, this is the first study to rigorously investigate the effects of any intervention to prevent violence from school staff to children in primary school in a low-income setting. We hope the results will be informative across the African region and in other settings.Trial registrationclinicaltrials.gov NCT01678846

Violence against primary school children with disabilities in Uganda: a cross-sectional study

Background150 million children live with disabilities globally, and a recent systematic review found 3 to 4 times the levels of violence versus non-disabled children in high income countries. However, almost nothing is known about violence against disabled children in lower income countries. We aim to explore the prevalence, patterns and risk factors for physical, sexual and emotional violence among disabled children attending primary school in Luwero District, Uganda.MethodsWe performed a secondary analysis of data from the baseline survey of the Good Schools Study. 3706 children and young adolescents aged 11-14 were randomly sampled from 42 primary schools. Descriptive statistics were computed and logistic regression models fitted.Results8.8% of boys and 7.6% of girls reported a disability. Levels of violence against both disabled and non-disabled children were extremely high. Disabled girls report slightly more physical (99.1% vs 94.6%, p = 0.010) and considerably more sexual violence (23.6% vs 12.3%, p = 0.002) than non-disabled girls; for disabled and non-disabled boys, levels are not statistically different. The school environment is one of the main venues at which violence is occurring, but patterns differ by sex. Risk factors for violence are similar between disabled and non-disabled students.ConclusionsIn Uganda, disabled girls are at particular risk of violence, notably sexual violence. Schools may be a promising venue for intervention delivery. Further research on the epidemiology and prevention of violence against disabled and non-disabled children in low income countries is urgently needed.

Risky positions? Shifting representations of urban youth in the talk of professionals and young people

Drawing on data from a study of young people and neighbourhood risk, this paper examines the interconnected discourses utilised by professionals and young people as they talk about youth and their social networks in an urban UK neighbourhood with high levels of youth crime and social deprivation. Working with theories of discourse and subjectivity, we focus in particular on the multiplicity of meanings in talk, with both conscious and unconscious motivations, in order to understand how riskiness and vulnerability are woven into professional accounts and in the young peoples narratives. Young people in urban neighbourhoods have often been conceived in dichotomous terms as ‘risky’ or ‘at risk’ of entry into cycles of crime and violence. While these discourses were echoed in the talk of professionals we interviewed, their accounts varied considerably in relation to professional accountabilities and personal trajectories. Sometimes, in avoiding labelling young people themselves, professionals constructed signifying chains around the risky family or neighbourhood. Young people both critiqued and creatively reworked these discourses in order to strive for a more resilient, autonomous self-positioning within the neighbourhood. Through tracing how some signifiers are over-emphasised, while others are submerged, we build an account of some of the fragile and disrupted discursive articulations of young people and professionals reflecting on the contexts where they live or work.

Research on/as violence: reflections on injurious moments in research with friendship groups

This article addresses the issue of harm in the research process. While researchers seek to conduct research that minimises harm, this paper argues that approaches adopted often create new forms of harm. This proposition is examined through drawing on Bourdieu’s ideas about symbolic violence and poststructural theories of identity, to critically reflect on three moments of harm that occurred in research on violence with groups of young people in South Africa and the UK. The paper traces ways in which the research topic, research relationship and dynamics of friendship groups produced physical, emotional and symbolic violence, and asks whether the research was itself an act of violation. Yet sometimes there is value in the conflicts that happen. Conflicts in the research setting may disrupt, destabilise and contest violence, and perhaps the most ethical research position may not be to try to eradicate harm, but to increase these destabilising moments.

Dangerous encounters? Boys' peer dynamics and neighbourhood risk

This article traces links between subjectivity, peer relations and neighbourhood risk for a group of boys living in an area of London with high levels of crime, gang activity and socio-economic inequality. Drawing on data from a qualitative study of young people and neighbourhood risk, we use a psycho-social approach to analyse how gendered subjectivities are shaped by the specific social context. We found that tough masculinities were performed by boys across different social arenas of school, neighbourhood and in the context of a weekly research group. But the boys were also troubled by these masculinities, and their own engagement in data analysis illuminated some of their fears. While the tough masculine ideal is revealed often to be a masquerade, it nevertheless exerts a powerful and pernicious influence over the subjectivities of young men trying to navigate safely through a context of everyday risks.

Between tradition and modernity: girls’ talk about sexual relationships and violence in Kenya, Ghana and Mozambique

ABSTRACT This paper interrogates the influence of a tradition-modernity dichotomy on perspectives and practices on sexual violence and sexual relationships involving girls in three districts of Kenya, Ghana and Mozambique. Through deploying an analytical framework of positioning within multiple discursive sites, we argue that although the dichotomy misrepresents the complexity of contemporary communities, it is nonetheless deployed by girls, educational initiatives and researchers in their reflections on girls’ sexual practices and sexual violence. The analysis examines variations between communities in patterns of and perspectives about sexual relationships, transactional sex and sexual violence. It illuminates ways in which features of ‘modernisation’ and ‘tradition’ both exacerbate and protect girls from violence. Across contexts, girls actively positioned themselves between tradition and modernity, while positioning others at the extreme poles. Education initiatives also invoked bipolar positions in their attempts to protect girls’ rights to education and freedom from violence. The paper concludes by considering the implications for educational intervention and the potential for the analytical framing to generate richer, more contextualised understandings about girls’ perspectives, experiences and ways of resisting sexual violence.

Women's human rights: seeking gender justice in a globalising age

This book sets out to reflect on advocacy around women’s human rights throughout the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Whilst maintaining a critical stance, overall the book is refreshingly upbeat. It is also well written, at the same time scholarly and readable. Reilly wrote this book as a postdoctoral fellow. It built on her doctoral research in the field of politics, experience as a women’s human rights activist since Vienna (1993) and Beijing (1995), and role in coordinating the ‘16 Days of ActivismAgainst Gender Violence Campaign’ in its early years. She acknowledges the influence on her work of Charlotte Bunch, with whom she worked at the Center for Women’s Global Leadership at Rutgers University, and her commitment to global feminism that lies at the heart of the book:

Making meaning from data on school-related gender-based violence by examining discourse and practice: insights from a mixed methodology study in Ghana and Mozambique

Abstract Efforts to address school-related gender-based violence (SRGBV) globally are hampered by conceptual and methodological difficulties in capturing meaningful data needed to inform policy and practice. Whilst the emphases of influential studies tend to be on measuring practice of violence, the authors investigate whether they can develop a more meaningful analysis that incorporates attention to both discourse and practice. They do this by examining data collected through a five-year mixed-methods study assessing change in SRGBV in Ghana and Mozambique. The analysis reveals how in the two quite different contexts there were different discursive emphases and in turn practices which were invisible in the SRGBV disclosure data. They identify how both quantitative and qualitative data contribute to understanding changing gender violence in ways that can be illuminating. It is by understanding the interplay between discourse and practice that can really help us understand ‘what works’ to address SRGBV.

You're like a prisoner in your house. She's not allowed to go anywhere. Autonomy in young people's familial relationships in areas affected by high youth crime

This paper examines how young people living in a London neighbourhood with high levels of crime, negotiate risk with their parents. Parenting strategies for protecting children from risk have been criticised as authoritarian and over-protective, or as neglectful and chaotic. As they discussed how their own families grappled with anxieties about crime, violence and sexual activity, the young people in this study described complex relationships characterised by sensitive negotiation, bounded trust, and support to manage life in a tough neighbourhood. While many families seemed able to maintain a balance between control and autonomy, and to smooth over discord, for others relationships were fractured, further increasing risks to their safety in a context of routine sexual harassment and gang activity. The paper concludes by considering the implications for risk management.