Provincial Education Director, Dan Moyo, said a child friendly schools policy would ensure that children were educated without fear. “One of the factors that we observed is that our schools were not child friendly, resulting in children failing to report cases of abuse to teaching staff because of fear,” Moyo said in an interview. “We want to create an enabling environment where the teacher will be able to identify the problems that a child has at home and be able to address these problems with other stakeholders.”
Late last year, The Zimbabwean carried a story of widespread sexual abuse of children at Lockview Primary School that is located on the outskirts of Bulawayo. A third of orphaned children at the primary school had been sexually abused, with a number of them infected with HIV. Lack of accommodation was blamed for the spike in child abuse cases at Lockview, a low density area with plots. Out of the 366 students, 350 of them came from families that shared a room.