by Jo Heslop, Jenny Parkes and Lucia Quintero Tamez

Violence against children occurs across the world in different contexts, affects all demographic groups, and causes serious harms to their rights, education, health, wellbeing and flourishing. In low and middle income countries, children face multiple forms of violence in and around schools, yet evidence needed to inform effective responses is still limited and uneven. Our team has created a guide for policy makers, practitioners and researchers to assess data availability and utility at country level in low and middle income countries.

Research has highlighted how violence is a social practice, shaped by relationships, norms, structures and conditions in the contexts in which violence occurs. For example, the #MeToo movement has brought to public consciousness how rape is connected to everyday sexual harassment, with both forms of violence situated within power inequalities (and associated impunity) based on gender, wealth, age and status. Similarly, violence affecting children in and around schools taking the form of corporal punishment, bullying, sexual harassment, intimate partner violence and child abuse, can be particularly acute in contexts with high levels of gender inequalities and poverty, which often underpin weak accountability systems in education, justice and child protection. It is important to collect data that reflect these multiple forms and contexts of violence.

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‘Can the subaltern speak?’

Decolonising Education and International Development Event launched by staff and students at UCL’s Centre for Education and International Development (CEID) 

by Shola Ejegi & Albina Tortbayeva

Dr Laila Kadiwal from CEID opened the event with this famous postcolonial question ‘Can the subaltern speak?’. In answer, she shared the words of her Dalit academic-activist friend, Mahitosh, who is the first Dalit lecturer/professor of English literature in India, who responded: ‘They can, but their voice remains under represented even in the Subaltern Studies literature’. Laila also told us that she grew up in a rural conflict-affected periphery of postcolonial India. Albina remembers her words that were powerful for her in both their openness and boldness: “I’m here because the East India Company and the Queen Victoria were there.  Of course, my class privileges also made it possible for me to be here”. In this very statement, she highlighted the continuing colonial legacies in the present through the university setting, and its intersections with issues of class.  Coloniality continues to echo in our society, and particularly in the education field which needs to work to transform and not to reproduce social inequalities.

Stories both personal and impressive came from other participants too –  professors, students and activists interested in researching the colonial entanglements underpinning the field of education and development joined this online event from a range of global locations. Professors Elaine Unterhalter and Moses Oketch – co-directors of the Centre for Education and International Development at UCL – shared their perspectives on the significance of decolonising the field of education and even the centre itself, inviting us on a brave journey to start questioning and naming colonial logics and uneven power dynamics in the field. We particularly felt brave being a part of the discussion cafe as it is a direct rejection of the ‘status quo.’ It felt eye opening to intentionally explore the meanings and history of discourses and practices that have been deemed universal, which are in fact are a reflection of Eurocentric norms at the expense of the voice and cultures of former colonised populations.

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