Quality, protection and coordination

1Psychosocial support and social and emotional learning

Pupils arrive with fears, bereavement, sleep or concentration problems. Most regain their balance thanks to a safe, predictable and caring environment. In the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) intervention pyramid for mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS), schools act mainly at the first two levels: basic services and security, and community and family supports.

• Psychosocial support: routines, a warm welcome, play, sports and arts activities, positive discipline, links with families.
• Social and emotional learning (SEL): short, regular sessions to learn to recognise emotions, manage stress, cooperate and resolve conflicts, integrated into reading or mathematics lessons.
• Referral: the teacher is not a therapist. A child in severe distress, a victim of violence or at risk is referred discreetly to child protection or mental health services according to the agreed procedure.

The INEE Guidance Note on Psychosocial Support and Social and Emotional Learning (2018) describes these practices in detail.

2Safe schools: attacks and risks

Education is under attack in many conflicts: shelling of schools, abduction of pupils, threats against female teachers, military use of buildings. Attacks on schools are among the six grave violations against children tracked by the United Nations Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism (MRM). The Safe Schools Declaration, opened for endorsement by States in Oslo in 2015 and championed by the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA), commits more than a hundred States, in particular to use the Guidelines for Protecting Schools and Universities from Military Use.

In the field: school safety plans, early warning systems with the community, adapted timetables and routes, evacuation drills, documentation and reporting of incidents to the cluster and the MRM, and dialogue with armed actors by mandated organisations. For disasters, the Comprehensive School Safety Framework rests on three pillars: safe learning facilities, school disaster risk management, and risk reduction and resilience education.

3Monitoring learning

Counting enrolled pupils does not tell you whether they are learning. A solid monitoring system combines:

• A baseline assessment of foundational literacy and numeracy skills (rapid tools based on EGRA and EGMA, or ministry tests), to group pupils by level.
• Regular formative assessment in the classroom, which allows the teacher to adjust teaching.
• An end-of-cycle assessment, compared with the baseline, and measurement of well-being and social and emotional skills with validated tools.
• Process indicators: pupil and teacher attendance, pupil-teacher ratio, availability of textbooks, support visits carried out.

Teaching at the right level approaches (grouping by level rather than by age) produce good results in catching up on basic skills. Results are analysed by sex, age and disability, shared with parent committees and used for decision-making.

4The Education cluster and Education Cannot Wait

The Education cluster is co-led at global level by UNICEF and Save the Children; at national level, it works with the Ministry of Education, which often co-chairs it. Its functions: JENA and joint analysis, 5W mapping, harmonised standards (incentives, kits, TLS), the sector response plan within the HRP, gap monitoring and advocacy. In refugee situations, education coordination falls under UNHCR together with the government, according to the Refugee Coordination Model.

Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, created in 2016 at the World Humanitarian Summit and hosted by UNICEF, funds First Emergency Responses (FER) and Multi-Year Resilience Programmes (MYRP), designed with the government, the cluster or the local education group and development actors. For an NGO, being active in the cluster is often the condition for accessing this funding.

5Integrating psychosocial support and SEL into the classroom: method and referral protocol

The INEE Guidance Note on Psychosocial Support and Social and Emotional Learning (2018) and the IASC Guidelines on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Emergency Settings (2007) set the framework. In the field, the difficulty is not understanding the intervention pyramid, but practically organising three things: a classroom environment that protects, regular social and emotional learning (SEL) sessions and a referral pathway that works.

Level 1: a protective classroom environment

• A fixed daily routine: individual welcome at the door, an opening activity (song, circle), announcement of the day's programme, a closing ritual. Predictability reduces anxiety.
• Rules co-created with pupils, displayed, few in number (4 to 6), positively worded.
• Positive discipline: no corporal punishment or humiliation; reinforcement of expected behaviour, logical and proportionate consequences, one-to-one conversations.
• Structured time for play and expression: sport, drawing, drama, at least 30 minutes a day at the start of the response.

Level 2: a structured SEL programme

SEL sessions are short (20 to 30 minutes), held at least two to three times a week, and follow a progression: recognising and naming emotions; managing stress (breathing, grounding); cooperating and communicating; resolving conflict; setting a goal. They rely on a ready-to-use session guide for the teacher, because a teacher with little training cannot improvise a programme. Several organisations offer such guides (for example Save the Children's "Healing and Education Through the Arts" approach, or the IRC's "Healing Classrooms"); the cluster or the MHPSS working group indicates which ones are adapted and translated in the country.

Referral protocol: who does what

For this protocol to work: an up-to-date service mapping (who, where, opening hours, criteria), a written agreement with the child protection partner, a trained focal point in each school, a confidential referral form and follow-up of the response (the teacher must know that the child has been taken care of, without knowing the details).

Measuring well-being without causing harm

Use validated and adapted tools, administered in groups or by trained people, with questions that do not reawaken trauma. Examples of tools used in the sector: Save the Children's International Social and Emotional Learning Assessment (ISELA) and Holistic Assessment of Learning and Development Outcomes (HALDO), or well-being modules integrated into reading assessments. The results are used to adjust the programme, never to label children.

The teacher is neither a psychologist nor an investigator. Their role: create a safe setting, teach social and emotional skills, identify and refer according to a known procedure. Anything beyond that is a matter for professionals.

6School safety: safety plan, incident management and documentation

The Comprehensive School Safety Framework (2022-2030 edition, led by the Global Alliance for Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience in the Education Sector, GADRRRES) applies to all hazards, including conflict and violence. Its pillars (safer learning facilities, school safety and resilience management, risk reduction and resilience education), underpinned by enabling systems and policies, translate in the field into a safety plan for each school.

Developing a school safety plan in 5 steps

1. Committee: the head teacher, two teachers (one woman, one man), two parents, two pupil representatives from the highest grade, a community representative. It meets for half a day with the NGO's support.
2. Risk mapping: drawing the school and its surroundings with the pupils (dangerous routes, combat zones, armed checkpoints, rivers, areas suspected of explosive ordnance contamination); list of hazards (attack, abduction, military use, flood, fire, epidemic).
3. Analysis: likelihood and severity of each hazard, on a scale of 1 to 3, and mitigation measures.
4. Procedures: evacuation, lockdown, family reunification (handing children over only to authorised adults), alert, communication with the NGO and the authorities, temporary closure and resumption.
5. Drills: at least one per term, evaluated, with the plan updated afterwards.

Managing an incident: the sequence

1. Bring pupils and staff to safety according to the procedure (lockdown or evacuation).
2. Alert the NGO manager and the security manager; do not improvise a negotiation.
3. Return children to their families according to the reunification procedure.
4. Document within 24 to 48 hours: date, time, location, nature, alleged perpetrators without speculation, consequences (injuries, school days lost, pupils affected), sources. No children's names in coordination reports.
5. Pass on the information through the agreed channels: internal incident report, Education Cluster (aggregated data), MRM actors through the designated focal point, without investigating the violation yourself.
6. Decide on resumption with the community: reopening, temporary relocation, distance learning, reinforced psychosocial support.

The legal and policy framework to know

• The MRM was established by Security Council resolution 1612 (2005); attacks on schools and hospitals became a trigger for listing parties in the annexes of the Secretary-General's report with resolution 1998 (2011).
• The Safe Schools Declaration (2015) commits endorsing States to use the Guidelines for Protecting Schools and Universities from Military Use during Armed Conflict.
• International humanitarian law protects schools as civilian objects, unless they are used for military purposes: this is precisely why military use puts pupils in danger.
• The Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA) publishes a reference report, Education under Attack, which documents trends and proposes common definitions.

An education NGO documents and passes on information; it does not investigate violations and does not negotiate alone with armed actors. These functions belong to mandated and trained actors, and mixing roles puts teams and schools in danger.

7Monitoring learning: a complete system and a worked example with figures

Donors, and Education Cannot Wait in particular, now expect learning outcomes and not just enrolment figures. A sound system includes an appropriate tool, a carefully designed sample, a comparable baseline and endline, and above all the use of results to adapt teaching.

Choosing the tool

Example: catch-up programme in Kessala

The programme covers 24 schools and 7,800 pupils aged 8 to 12. Measurement plan: a stratified random sample of 12 out of 24 schools, 20 pupils per school randomly drawn from the register (10 girls, 10 boys), i.e. 240 pupils, with a 20% margin to compensate for absentees and dropouts (288 pupils to be selected). The same pupils are reassessed at the end of the year (longitudinal follow-up). Main indicator: proportion of pupils able to read a simple paragraph with comprehension (at least 3 questions out of 5).

Interpreting rigorously

• Attribution: without a comparison group, the progress cannot be entirely attributed to the programme (a year of schooling produces progress in any case). Speak of "progress observed among programme pupils".
• Attrition: the 37 pupils lost to follow-up may be the most vulnerable; compare their baseline scores with those of the pupils who remained.
• Disaggregation: the gap for children with a functional difficulty (+14 points versus +25) is a warning sign, even though the small number (21) calls for caution. Decision: strengthen inclusion assistants and screening.
• Use: results by school, presented to teachers and management committees, trigger an action plan. A school with no progress receives additional coaching visits.

Process indicators to monitor monthly

• Pupil attendance rate by sex, age and disability (alert threshold often set at 80%).
• Teacher attendance rate and payment delays.
• Number of classroom visits conducted compared with the plan, and average score on the observation tool.
• Pupil-to-textbook or pupil-to-reading-kit ratio.
• Number of referrals made and taken up.

A learning outcome that has never been shown to teachers has served only the donor report. The monitoring system is first and foremost a teaching tool.

8Working with the cluster and preparing an ECW application: a practical method

For an NGO, coordination is not an administrative obligation: it is where areas of intervention, standards, funding priorities and advocacy messages are decided. Organisations that are absent from meetings or report poorly on their activities are rarely selected in pooled fund allocations or Education Cannot Wait programmes.

The regular obligations of a cluster partner

Avoiding double counting in the 5W

The cluster generally tracks a headline indicator such as "number of children accessing formal or non-formal education". A child who receives a kit, benefits from a rehabilitated classroom and attends an SEL programme is counted once for this indicator. Activities are reported under separate indicators (kits distributed, classrooms built, teachers trained). When an international NGO funds a local partner, only one organisation reports the beneficiaries, and the 5W shows both names.

Preparing an application under ECW's First Emergency Response

1. Trigger: ECW consults the Humanitarian Coordinator, the cluster or education coordination group and the agencies; the cluster organises the prioritisation, not the NGO alone.
2. Prioritisation within the cluster: priority areas and groups according to severity, coverage gaps and partners' operational capacity. Written and shared criteria.
3. Design: a coherent package (access, protection, well-being, learning), quantified targets, indicators aligned with ECW's results framework, a duration generally in the order of 12 months.
4. Budget: justified cost per child, share transferred to local and national organisations, monitoring and child safeguarding costs included.
5. Review: checking consistency with the HRP, inclusion (girls, children with disabilities, refugees and IDPs), compliance with cluster standards and the safeguarding policy.

What ECW and other donors look at

• Alignment with the joint analysis and cluster priorities.
• Targeting of girls (ECW sets high targets for girls' participation in its programmes) and children with disabilities, with concrete and budgeted measures.
• Measured learning and well-being outcomes, not just access.
• Localisation: the real place of national organisations in design, implementation and the budget.
• Links with multi-year resilience programmes and the national system.

An NGO's best argument in an allocation is its credibility within the cluster: reliable and up-to-date 5W data, compliance with standards, active presence in working groups, well-documented incidents.

9Common mistakes and adaptations by context

Common mistakes in quality and protection

Adapting to the context

• Sudden-onset emergency: structured recreational and psychosocial activities from the first week, linked with child protection's child-friendly spaces; SEL and academic content introduced gradually; learning assessment postponed to the second or third month.
• Protracted crisis: a shift from psychosocial activities to an SEL programme integrated into the national curriculum; annual learning assessment aligned with ministry tools; strengthened inspections.
• Camp: high density, many actors; close coordination with camp management and protection; lower risks related to journeys to school but risks of violence within the camp.
• Urban setting: children dispersed and enrolled in overcrowded public schools; support to host schools, after-school catch-up classes, cash transfers; the safety of journeys depends on the urban environment (traffic, gangs).
• Active insecurity: distance learning (radio, printed materials distributed by committees, phone calls from teachers), small community groups close to homes, adapted schedules, the possibility of suspending without losing contact with pupils.
• Remote management: third-party monitoring, verification calls to management committees, dated photos of registers without personal data, strengthening local partners for protection and referral.
• Local partners with limited capacity: gradual support on case management, security and learning assessment; simplified tools; funding of their running costs.

Links with other sectors

The school is a platform: school feeding with the food security sector (the World Food Programme and the authorities), nutrition screening, vaccination and deworming with health, hygiene education and facilities with WASH, explosive ordnance risk education with mine action, and referral with child protection and gender-based violence response. Each link must be formalised (agreement, procedure, focal points), otherwise it remains theoretical.

10Interview questions and key references

Questions and elements of a good answer

1. "How would you integrate psychosocial support into an education programme?" A protective environment (routines, positive discipline), regular SEL sessions with a structured guide, teacher training and support, a referral protocol with child protection, validated measurement tools. The candidate places the school at the first levels of the IASC pyramid and specifies what the teacher must not do.
2. "An armed group is occupying a school you support. What do you do?" Safety of pupils and staff, informing the security manager, factual documentation, passing information to the cluster and to MRM actors through the agreed channels, an education continuity solution, coordinated advocacy based on the Safe Schools Declaration. No individual negotiation.
3. "How do you measure learning in an emergency programme?" Choice of an appropriate tool (EGRA and EGMA, rapid ASER-type tools), a sample, baseline and endline on the same pupils, trained assessors, disaggregation, limits of attribution, pedagogical use of the results.
4. "Your results show that pupils with disabilities are progressing half as fast as the others. What do you do?" Check the sample size and data quality, analyse the causes (accessibility, assistive devices, pedagogy, attendance), adapt (assistants, training, screening), monitor closely and report honestly to the donor.
5. "What is the role of the Education Cluster and what do you expect from a partner?" Cluster functions (analysis, 5W, standards, HRP, advocacy, capacity strengthening), global co-leadership by UNICEF and Save the Children, the ministry's role; partner obligations (reliable reporting, compliance with standards, participation).
6. "How does Education Cannot Wait work?" A fund hosted by UNICEF, created in 2016; First Emergency Responses, Multi-Year Resilience Programmes, the Acceleration Facility; a process led by national coordination; requirements on girls, disability, learning and localisation.

Key references

• INEE, Guidance Note on Psychosocial Support and Social and Emotional Learning (2018) and the associated toolkit.
• IASC, Guidelines on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Emergency Settings (2007).
• GADRRRES, Comprehensive School Safety Framework 2022-2030.
• GCPEA, Guidelines for Protecting Schools and Universities from Military Use during Armed Conflict and the Education under Attack reports.
• Safe Schools Declaration (2015).
• United Nations Security Council resolutions 1612 (2005) and 1998 (2011); MRM Field Manual.
• RTI International and USAID, EGRA and EGMA toolkits; PAL Network and ASER for citizen-led assessments.
• Save the Children, ISELA, IDELA and HALDO tools.
• Global Education Cluster, Coordinator Handbook, indicator framework and guidance on the 5W.
• Education Cannot Wait, results framework, guidance for First Emergency Responses and Multi-Year Resilience Programmes.