Creating Safe Schools in Zimbabwe: Strengthening Safeguarding Frameworks, Professional Ethics, and Child Protection in Basic Education

This article examines how safe schools can be strengthened in Zimbabwean basic education through safeguarding frameworks, professional ethics and child protection mechanisms. It reports a systematic literature review guided by PRISMA 2020. Searches across academic databases, institutional repositories and legal/policy sources identified 25 evidence sources published between 2021 and 2026: 15 peer-reviewed studies, five Zimbabwean institutional or policy documents, one legal instrument and four global or regional evidence frameworks. From the synthesis, it can be seen that learner protection goes beyond disciplinary issues and infrastructure and includes prevention, disclosure of abuse in a child-friendly manner, referral and case management, professional boundaries, and inclusion and accountability within school governance. Fear, power imbalance, poor mechanisms for reporting and inadequate response by institutions remain some of the obstacles as highlighted by Zimbabwean literature. On the other hand, literature from the region and global perspectives emphasizes a whole school approach, multi-disciplinary involvement, and a disability-inclusive framework. The problem with the literature available is the lack of large-scale research and programmatic studies that easily show the extent of their reach but not their impact.

safe schools; safeguarding; child protection; professional ethics; basic education; Zimbabwe; school governance.

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