UNICEF and Britain’s Foreign Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO), plan to collaborate with Kano State government to end corporal punishment in schools.
Rahama Farah, UNICEF’s Chief of Kano Field Office, gave the hint on Wednesday in Kano at a stakeholders’ workshop on ending corporal punishment in schools.
Represented by Mr Michael Banda, UNICEF Education Manager in the Kano office, Farah noted that the workshop would focus on all forms of violence against children in schools.
“We are mounting a communication campaign to ensure that stakeholders in all schools take forward the message that all forms of violence against children in schools must end now.
“We have heard that violence has impact on children’s wellbeing; it affects how children learn and how they perceive themselves; it also affects their development,’’ he said.
He added that internet-based violence against children that sometimes occur among the children themselves through postings in the internet and bullying must also end.
In a paper he presented on psycho-social effects of corporal punishment, Prof. Sani Lawal-Malumfashi of the Department of Sociology, Bayero University, Kano, said it could lead to aggression in children.
Lawal-Malumfashi listed other effects to include social misbehaviour, emotional grating, and problem of coordination, concentration and poor comprehension in class.
He noted that teachers must be conversant with the UN Convention on the Rights of Children, which highlighted a number of rights that children must have.
“Right to live and in good health; right to live as a child and not as an adult; right to be taken care of and right to be loved are bestowed on children.
“Right to have the attention of parents and teachers; right to quality food; right to protection against attack and protection against poverty are also bestowed on children in the Convention,’’ he said.
He noted that depriving a child of food, of rest, and shaming or humiliating a child are also forms of corporal punishment.
Lawal-Malumfashi advised that schools’ curricula should be reviewed to take care of the rights.
He added that teachers must be taught how to reinforce positive behaviour like praising a child whenever he or she did the right things.
He said a child should also be taught clean up when he or she showed up in a dirty form in school and be taught to say “sorry’’ after offending another person.
“Corporal punishment is ineffective, inefficient and counter-productive,’’ the professor stressed.
Dr Danga Jamiu-Yusuf of the Nigeria Defence Academy, Kaduna, also presented a paper on synthesis of evidence on the use of corporal punishment in schools.
He said corporal punishment had led to reduction in school enrolment, led to high dropout rate, truancy, emotional and mental and physical abuse of children.
Jamiu-Yusuf added that creating awareness in stakeholders on the implication of corporal punishment, training of teachers and administrators on positive reinforcement would serve as part of the solutions.
