Region: Kiambu and Homa Bay (select wards)
Partners: LVCT Health and Evidence and Beyond, in collaboration with the Kenya Ministry of Education and Teachers Service Commission
Project Duration: 2023-2026
Funders: Together for Girls and Wellsprings Philanthropic Fund
Overview
Learning Environments that Advance Rights and Nonviolence
Corporal punishment is still widely used in Kenyan schools despite being banned by the government in 2001. Children continue to face caning, slapping, and humiliation, which harms their mental health, lowers academic performance, and perpetuates cycles of violence. Teachers often lack training in positive alternatives and children are rarely aware of their rights, leaving them unprotected.
The LEARN (Learning Environments that Advance Rights and Nonviolence) project was developed to change this. It equips learners with life skills to recognise and resist violence, trains teachers in non-violent discipline, supports school leaders to embed safe school policies, and engages caregivers to reinforce positive practices at home. By addressing these four levels together, LEARN aims to reduce corporal punishment and create safer, more inclusive schools where children can thrive.
Our Theory of Change
LEARN is built on the understanding that ending corporal punishment requires coordinated change across the entire school ecosystem. By empowering learners with knowledge and voice, equipping teachers with practical, non-violent strategies, supporting school leaders to embed a culture of care, and engaging caregivers in positive parenting, LEARN helps schools shift daily routines and relationships. These changes reinforce each other to make safety and respect the norm in every classroom.
Explore our LEARN Toolkit: A Whole-School Approach to Ending Corporal Punishment in Kenya
The LEARN Toolkit is a structured, school-based programme designed to end corporal punishment and create safer, more inclusive learning environments in Kenyan primary schools. It uses a whole-school approach, engaging learners, teachers, school leaders, and caregivers to replace violence with positive discipline, child protection, and social-emotional learning.
Learners: Children in Grades 3 to 6 use the illustrated Heroes in the Making workbook in 18 sessions on rights, safety, managing emotions, conflict resolution, and friendships, with quick activities and guided discussion in class and short take-home reflections to strengthen empathy, communication, and help-seeking across school and home. In addition, learners bring home reflection activities from their workbooks, sparking conversations around emotions, safety, and positive behaviour. This ensures that children experience consistent messages and support between school and home.
Teachers use a facilitation guide to deliver lessons in class, while learners also complete take-home tasks with their caregivers. This three-way approach helps children practice empathy, self-expression, and help-seeking across school, home, and peer settings.
Positive Discipline Approaches for Teachers
Teachers take part in structured training and ongoing mentorship to replace corporal punishment with constructive alternatives. They attend a four-day orientation, followed by continuous support through peer learning groups and digital microlearning forums. Using a detailed facilitator manual and personal reflection journals, teachers learn to apply positive discipline strategies, manage stress, and foster safe, inclusive classrooms. Teachers will receive ongoing coaching through self-reflection logs, school-based, teacher-led peer groups and termly reflection circles.
My Caring Classroom Companion guides practical reflection from day one and links to monthly self-reflection logs so teachers track progress, manage stress, and embed positive discipline in daily routines.
In addition, teachers and educators will be supported through term time digital microlearning that delivers prompts, concise lessons, reflective questions and ready to use tip sheets aligned to LEARN modules, with space for peer exchange, ongoing mentorship and quick problem solving; participation is open to all trained staff and organised by school for relevance.
Positive Parenting & Community Engagement for Safe Schools
Parents and caregivers are engaged through short, structured sessions during PTA forums and community events, using a practical facilitation guide. Themes include understanding children’s rights, safe and supportive parenting, and alternatives to harsh discipline.
Safe School Leadership for Positive Discipline
Headteachers, Deputies, and Board of Management members are oriented on how to integrate LEARN into school routines, timetables, and governance processes. They use simple accountability tools to monitor progress on safeguarding, teacher support, and life-skills delivery. Reflection circles each term allow leaders to share experiences, problem-solve, and strengthen collective responsibility for child protection and school safety.
The LEARN Toolkit is implemented with supportive supervision and regular mentorship, ensuring schools receive hands-on guidance. An elaborate Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning framework with indicators aligned with global good practice on whole-school violence prevention will be used to track fidelity of implementation, measure changes in knowledge, attitudes, and practices among learners, teachers, leaders, and caregivers, and generate actionable evidence to inform policy adoption, programme refinement, and national scale-up.
A snapshot of our reach and impact
1130+Number of parents reached of primary school learners in the project focus counties |
162+Number of teachers, Head of Institutions and BoM reps reached with LEARN interventions |
70+Number of education stakeholders county and national level engaged |
Watch our featured video
Alignment with Policy
LEARN is grounded in and directly supports Kenya’s legal and policy commitments to end violence against children. It aligns with the Constitution of Kenya (2010), which guarantees children’s right to dignity and protection from abuse, the Children Act (2022), which prohibits corporal punishment, and the Basic Education Act (2013), which mandates safe learning environments.
LEARN advances Kenya’s National Prevention and Response Plan on Violence Against Children (2019–2023), and contributes to global Sustainable Development Goal 16.2 to end all forms of violence against children. As a signatory to the 2024 Bogotá Pledge, Kenya has committed to scale evidence-based approaches to safe, inclusive, and non-violent schools, commitments that LEARN directly responds to through its whole-school design.
LEARN is implemented by LVCT Health and Evidence and BEYOND, and collaborates with the Kenya Ministry of Education and Teachers Service Commission. The programme is financially supported by Together for Girls and Wellspring Philanthropic Fund.
Featured News and Blogs
Kenya’s Bogotá Pledge on safe and enabling schools commits to train at least 100,000 teachers and non-teaching staff by 2030, make positive discipline a national standard through evidence-based school safety programmes, expand psychosocial support and meaningful learner participation, and strengthen digital safety education, aligning closely with whole-school life-skills approaches.
Kenya’s National Prevention and Response Plan on Violence Against Children sets Education and Life Skills as a core pillar, with schools expected to provide safe, enabling environments, integrate age-appropriate life skills and values education that focuses on violence prevention, strengthen child-friendly reporting and referral in every school, and build teacher capacity on codes of conduct and positive discipline so guidance and counselling replace corporal punishment, with progress tracked through education sector systems and indicators for functional life-skills programmes. It directs the inclusion of violence prevention and response in Life Skills and the CBC and builds teacher capacity to prevent, identify and respond to abuse.
Sharing Experiences from the Africa Hub’s Quarterly Convening In line with the Coalition’s first core pillar to convene violence prevention practitioners, researchers and thought leaders, the Africa Regional Hub convened for its first Quarterly Meeting of 2025 last week, at a time when collective action and learning is needed more than ever. Read More: https://coalitionforgoodschools.org/shared-experience-from-the-africa-hub-quarterly-convening/
How to Get Involved
We partner with universities and research institutes and host students and researchers on live projects to build skills and deliver impact. We also offer technical assistance to ministries, NGOs, and school networks to design, adapt, and evaluate school based prevention and life skills programmes aligned child protection standards.
Contact Information:
For inquiries about the LEARN project, please contact:
Anne Ngunjiri: Anne.Ngunjiri@lvcthealth.org