In March 2020, the government of Uganda closed all schools and other educational institutions to mitigate the wide spread of COVID-19. This exposed significant risk especially to rural areas where there is limited access to reading materials or virtual learning platforms to continue learning. Ministry of Education and Sports’ (MoES) Preparedness and Response Plan for COVID-19 (April 2020) outlined measures of continuing learning through radio, take home packages and digital learning. MoES also decided to provide psychosocial support to minimize the adverse effects of COVID-19 on pupils, teachers and the education system at large, through support from USAID/Uganda Literacy Achievement and Retention Activity (LARA).The project planned to support MoES to enhance capacity of Primary Teachers college tutors and administrators to cascade psychosocial support training to head teachers and teachers in 43 districts. The objective of the training was to i) equip participants with knowledge and skills on psychosocial support, ii) identify psychosocial needs and discuss appropriate interventions and iii) apply psychosocial support intervention skills. The Facilitator guide provides information which will help reduce COVID-19 related stress, anxiety and prepare teachers for school reopening. In addition, teachers will be able to protect and provide counselling to pupils.

LARA developed a set of qualitative tools to learn about the successes and challenges related to the implementation of Journeys and to understand what changes staff and pupils had observed since Journeys started in the program schools. The qualitative tools include individual interviews and focus group discussion (FGD) guides with head teachers, teaching and non-teaching staff, change agents and students. There are two individual interviews, one for the teachers and another for the head teachers. The individual interview for teachers investigates the value the Journeys program has brought to the teachers personally, to the school and the classroom, for example changes in the way teachers relate and interact with pupils and changes in disciplinary practices at the school. The individual interview for head teachers on the other hand investigate what has gone well and what the head teachers are struggling with regarding the implementation of Journeys for School Staff and Journeys for Pupils (the Uganda Kids Unite [UKU] Program). There are three FGD guides; (i) FGD guide for teaching and non-teaching staff provides information about the changes (for example interactions among students, teacher attendance, extent of SRGBV) in the school as a result of Journeys, initiatives undertaken by the school to make the school safe and positive and how the initiatives improved the school and/or reduced violence; (ii) FGD guide for head Teachers and school change agents (SCA) that gathers feedback on the successes and challenges associated with the implementation of Journeys program for the school staff and Journeys program for pupils as well as improvements needed to for the continuity of the Journeys program in the schools; and (iii) FGD guide for students that focuses mainly on what pupils enjoyed most about the UKU program and the specific UKU activities they loved. It also asks about what pupils did not enjoy in the UKU meetings, initiatives that UKU teams developed to improve the school, what pupils learned through the UKU program and how the school and classroom have changed since Journeys began.

This tool is used by school support actors (e.g., DEOS, DIS, MEOs, DIS, MIS, IS, CCTs, head teachers, project staff) to monitor and support implementation of Journeys for school staff and Journeys for pupils. The tool serves two purposes: (i) to gather monitoring data to understand how well schools are organized and supported to implement the Journeys program. Monitoring data is also used for reporting purposes. With regard to Journeys for school staff, the type of monitoring data gathered using the MSS tool include the number of school change agents (SCAs) in the school, number of SCAs that have Journeys handbooks, number of Journeys for staff activities that the school conducted, evidence that SCAs receive support from support actors, number of SRGBV cases that have been resolved out of the total cases reported. For UKU, monitoring data gathered include the number of UKU teams in the school, number of UKU teams that have attendance registers, whether UKU attendance registers are updated regularly and whether UKU teams have work plans; (ii) to supervise and support SCAs and Teacher Patrons. SCAs lead Journeys sessions for Schools Staff while Teacher Patrons lead Journeys sessions for Pupils/UKU. The MSS tool has an observation checklist for School Staff Journeys sessions and an observation checklist for UKU sessions. The checklists are used by the school support actors to record key information about the Journeys session they observed, including whether the SCA/Teacher Patron applied Journeys facilitation approaches, followed the rights steps to conduct the session and used the planning form and evaluation form correctly to initiate and appraise the session respectively. Each checklist is complemented with a feedback section where the school support actors document the positive things (areas of strength) the SCA/Teacher Patron demonstrated during the Journeys activity and area of improvement.