What is ESAS?

Equally Safe at School (ESAS) was developed in partnership with schools to help prevent and tackle gender-based violence (GBV). It is a whole school approach, which supports schools to embed a set of holistic measures across every aspect of school life. Implementation of the intervention enables schools to continually build and reinforce messages that challenge violence and promote gender equality – across the curriculum, in everyday interactions between staff and students, in policies and procedures and in the culture and ethos of the school community.

The ESAS intervention incorporates the following holistic measures:

• Whole school assessments to find out what the main issues are in your school community through focus groups and surveys with students and staff
• A student-led action group where students and staff work together to plan actions to improve their school culture
• Teacher training to equip teachers with knowledge about GBV and the skills they need to prevent and respond to it
• Policy development that makes sure school policies relating to GBV are clear, comprehensive and effective
• Teaching resources to help ensure that the curriculum includes learning about gender equality and GBV
• Monitoring progress to find out how well activities are working and how to sustain progress

The website has been designed to make activities as straightforward and achievable as possible, and to enable senior management to lead, delegate, monitor and report on progress easily. Schools will make the best progress if they think about ESAS in a holistic way and carry out all the activities involved; however, they can choose to take a lighter-touch approach, utilising whichever tools best suit their needs.