By Khadija Mbesa
At the Africa Children Summit 2025, I sat in a breakout session listening to children from Malawi. I expected to hear about their favourite subjects, their friendships and the things they enjoyed about school. Instead, they spoke about pain and fear. They spoke about surviving in places where they were supposed to feel safe.
Their stories stayed with me. We send children to school believing they will be cared for. We tell them that education will give them a chance at a better life. But what happens when the place we send them to is also the place they dread?
When we talk about violence in schools, we often think of beatings and corporal punishment. Those are easier to recognise. We are less likely to notice the humiliation, the cruel comments and the everyday treatment that makes a child feel small. Sometimes, we have accepted these things for so long that we excuse them as discipline or harmless teasing.
But a child can be deeply hurt without anyone laying a hand on them.
Think of a girl who stains her skirt during her period and is laughed at. The next time her period comes, she may choose to stay home. Think of a boy mocked for having no lunch, who starts finding reasons to miss school. The laughter may stop after a few minutes. The shame can stay with that child long after everyone else has moved on.
Then there is the child sent home because their family cannot afford school fees or a uniform. They miss lessons and carry the embarrassment of a situation they have no control over. Poverty is already difficult enough without making a child feel that it is their fault.
We speak about education as a right. Yet we still allow a child’s circumstances to decide whether they can enjoy that right. A girl without menstrual products misses class. A child from a struggling family keeps being sent home. A girl who becomes pregnant faces judgement when she needs support to continue her education. These children deserve to learn, just as much as the child whose family can meet every school requirement.
And even getting to the classroom does not mean everything is fine.
Some children arrive at school tired because they have been working, caring for younger siblings or fetching water. Others arrive hungry. When they struggle to concentrate or fall behind, they may be called lazy or punished for poor performance. I wish we would pause long enough to ask what happened before they reached the classroom. What has that child already had to deal with before opening a book?
The way we respond matters. When a child’s explanation is dismissed as an excuse, asking for help becomes harder. When their tears are met with ridicule, they learn to hide them. A quiet child is not necessarily a child who is coping. Sometimes, they have simply stopped expecting anyone to listen.
For me, this is where our responsibility as adults becomes very clear. We cannot care about a child’s grades while ignoring whether they feel safe, whether they have eaten or whether they are afraid to come back tomorrow. Their wellbeing is part of their education.
Every child should feel that they belong in school. Their family’s income, their gender or the clothes they wear should never determine how they are treated. Teachers have an important part to play in this, and they need the training and support to do it well. Understanding how fear, stress and painful experiences affect children should be part of preparing someone to teach.
Children also need access to school counsellors and trusted adults who will take their concerns seriously. There should be someone they can speak to without worrying that their story will become gossip or that asking for help will lead to more punishment.
We can write good policies and put children’s rights on every classroom wall. But I want us to ask what those promises look like during an ordinary school day. What happens when a child reports bullying? What happens when a teacher humiliates a pupil? Who notices when a child stops attending, and does anyone try to find out why?
Policies without action are just ink on paper.
Change has to be visible in how adults behave. It is in the teacher who asks why a child keeps falling asleep instead of immediately punishing them. It is in the school that helps a girl manage her period with privacy and dignity. It is in an adult stopping a cruel joke, even when everyone else is laughing.
It also means questioning the things we grew up hearing. “Stop crying.” “Toughen up.” “We went through it and survived.” Surviving something does not make it right. We should want children to have better experiences than the painful ones we were taught to accept.
And care needs proper funding behind it. Schools need enough teachers, clean toilets, water and space for children to learn. Children need a safe way to get to school. Girls need menstrual products and privacy. We cannot keep making promises about education without providing the things that make those promises possible.
When I think back to that session with the children from Malawi, I keep returning to one question: what will be different for them because they spoke to us?
They shared experiences that adults needed to hear. Our responsibility is to do something with what they told us. That means following up, changing harmful practices and making sure children can see that speaking out leads to action.
They were asking for safety, dignity and the chance to learn without fear. These are things every child should be able to expect when they walk through a school gate.
The price of poverty should never be a broken child.