Rationale

The Good School Toolkit, developed by Ugandan NGO Raising Voices, is a complex behavioural intervention which aims to prevent violence against children. It adopts a whole-school approach to support all school actors to change the overall culture of the school. 

The Good School Study showed that the Toolkit reduced past week physical violence from school staff to students by 42% and improved students’ feelings of wellbeing and connection to schools. There was a clear need for a similar intervention in secondary schools, and so in 2015-16, LSHTM and Raising Voices adapted the Toolkit for use in secondary schools.  

The intervention

The Good School Toolkit includes various school-level activities, leadership workshops and tools and materials to support a school to progress through six core steps. It is led by teachers, students, and parents and community members affiliated with the school. 

Given the different needs and context of secondary schools, adaptations were made to the primary school toolkit including: 

• New content on certain topics including power, mental health, peer violence, intimate partner violence, student leadership and skills for making smart choices 
• Greater focus on sexual harassment and issues around gender and human rights  
• A more active role of students and school administrators in creating change 

All the tools and materials of the Good School Toolkit are publicly available on the Raising Voices website.  

Trial design

The GST-S pilot trial is a pilot cluster randomised trial of the adapted Toolkit in Kampala and Wakiso in Uganda to finalise the intervention and test research procedures in preparation for a larger trial to evaluate the effectiveness of the secondary schools version of the Good School Toolkit. 

The aims of the pilot trial are both intervention-related and research-related, and are:  

• To refine and finalise the GST-S intervention, ensuring acceptability and understanding and resonance  
• To understand feasibility of delivery of the intervention  
• To explore design parameters for a subsequent phase 3 trial  

The trial is being carried out in eight secondary schools, four of whom are currently receiving the GST-S intervention, and is expected to finish in mid-2023. 

This pilot trial is a collaboration between LSHTM, Raising Voices and the AfriChild Centre. 

We are also working on project with Raising Voices and the Africhild Centre where we are evaluating a new delivery model of the Good School Toolkit as a mechanism to scale up implementation. In this new model, schools are assigned specific individuals to train and support them called Regional Resource Persons (RRPs). RRPs are community facilitators trained by Raising Voices to support schools close to their home districts to implement the toolkit.