7.4
Furthermore to promote a safe education environment for children
especially girls in rural areas, Government is taking measures to
reduce walking distances to schools by increasing the number of
schools, ensuring that there is a secondary school for every three
primary schools.
7.5
Government is seized with the construction of schools through the
Public Sector Investment Programme (PSIP), Public Private
Partnerships (PPPs) and support from development partners. The
objective is to ensure that no primary school child walks more than
5 km and no secondary school child walks more than 10 kms to
get to school and that double sessioning is eradicated.
7.6
Government is implementing the Child Friendly Schools concept,
focusing on the creation of a healthy, safe, friendly and protective
learning environment for all children regardless of sex. This entails
among others, protecting all children from harm, either neglect,
abuse, violence or exploitation so that their other rights to
survival, development and participation can be fully met.
7.7
Government has also incorporated the Victim Friendly System into
the education sector with a view to empower learners to report
abuse. In addition, Child Protection Committees have been
established in schools to handle cases of child abuse and provide
learners with information on the channels for reporting abuse.
Government has put in place teams of educational psychologists
who offer psycho-educational counselling to affected learners in
order to minimize the trauma of abuse and its effect on the
learning process.
7.8
A Government directive has seen enrolment of women at technical
and teachers’ colleges increase to 30 and 50% respectively. In this
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