Resistance is a budget line: when funding shrinks in education, safety is the first thing to go

In working on violence in and around schools, resistance rarely arrives as open rejection or explicit backlash. More often, it shows up in quieter, more acceptable ways: in budget decisions, in prioritisation processes, and in the issues that are repeatedly pushed down the list when resources are tight.

Across contexts, education systems are under growing pressure. Official development assistance (ODA) is shrinking. Public spending is stretched. Governments and funders are being asked to make harder choices with less money. And in that environment, one pattern keeps surfacing: when education budgets contract, safety is often one of the first things to be reduced, delayed or dropped.

This is rarely described as opposition to safeguarding or violence prevention and response. Usually, it is framed as pragmatism. Classrooms, teachers, enrolment and learning outcomes are presented as the core business of education. While safety is treated as important, but not essential. Worth doing, but later. Necessary, but somehow separate.

That framing is not neutral. Safety is not an optional extra at the edge of education. It is part of what makes education possible.

Where children do not feel safe, access becomes fragile. Attendance becomes harder. Learning suffers. Dropout becomes more likely. And when safety is treated as negotiable, the burden does not fall evenly. It falls most heavily on those who already face the greatest barriers: girls, children with disabilities, and children affected by poverty, displacement, conflict and exclusion.

Scale and impact of resistance[1]

Violence in and around schools shapes the daily reality of millions of children and adolescents. It happens in schools, on the journey to and from school and online. Harassment, bullying, coercion, sexual violence and exploitation all undermine participation, wellbeing and learning. For some children, they narrow opportunity. For others, they end education altogether.

The effects are not limited to learners. Women teachers can face sexual harassment, exploitation and abuse in and around their work, with direct consequences for recruitment, retention and progression. That weakens the workforce, reduces the presence of female role models, and undermines longer-term efforts towards gender equality within and beyond schools.

Part of the challenge is structural. Safeguarding and violence prevention have too often been treated as project work rather than system work.

Outsourcing the duty of care

In many contexts, critical progress has been driven by civil society organisations rather than fully embedded within government education systems. That work has been vital. Civil society has pushed these issues into view, driven innovation, supported survivors, and kept pressure on institutions to act.

But when responsibility sits mainly outside the system, it is easier for both governments and funders to treat safety as additional rather than integral. It becomes easier to fund it temporarily rather than govern it properly. And when money tightens, it becomes easier still to cut.

The result is familiar: policies without budgets, training without supervision, reporting pathways without trusted response, and safeguarding measures that exist on paper or in pilots, but are not built into the way the system actually functions.

Resistance rarely says ‘no’ - deferring safety

This is one of the clearest ways resistance operates. It does not always say ‘no’. It appears as delay. As sequencing. As the argument that this is too complex for now, or that it sits outside the mandate of education, or that it can be addressed once the more immediate priorities are secured. But once budgets are set and plans are locked in, safety becomes much harder to reintroduce as a serious priority.

This is also why localisation and national ownership, while essential, are not enough on their own. Shifting decision-making closer to national systems does not automatically create safer schools. In contexts where harmful gender and social norms remain deeply embedded, institutions will often reflect those norms unless deliberate work is done to change them.

For example, if violence against women and girls is normalised in the wider society, it will not disappear at the school gate. It will be reproduced in education spaces unless systems are intentionally designed to prevent it, respond to it and challenge the beliefs that sustain it.

So, what does resistance look like in this moment?

Right now, resistance looks like the acceptance that safety can be negotiated when budgets are under pressure. It looks like treating violence prevention and response as secondary to other education goals, even though those goals are undermined when learners are unsafe. It looks like continued rhetorical commitment alongside practical retreat.

If we are serious about resisting rollback, then broad statements of support are not enough. We need clarity about what safety is, where it sits, and who is responsible for it. We need action and scaled, systems-wide delivery.

Safe and enabling schools must be treated as core education business. That means safety must be visible in sector plans, in budget lines, in institutional roles, and in accountability systems. It must be part of how education systems are designed, financed and evaluated. And it must be one of the things that gets protected when difficult funding decisions are made, not one of the first things to go.

When funding shrinks, the real issue is not only that programmes are cut - it is that priorities are exposed. If safety disappears first, that tells us something important. It tells us that, despite all the language around inclusion, protection and wellbeing, safety is still too often treated as negotiable. And for girls in particular, that negotiation carries a cost that can last a lifetime.

If we want to resist the rollback on women’s and girls’ rights and safety, we need to be honest about where resistance lives. Sometimes, it is in the budget line.