School WASH Insecurity Experiences Scales
Bringing the human voice to WASH in schools
We know whether WASH services are available in schools – but do they meet the needs of students and staff?
The School-WISE Scales are brief surveys that answer that question by capturing whether services are accessible, acceptable, and adequate for the people who depend on them.
Why we are building these tools
Reliable water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) is needed for schools to function well and promote an enabling environment for learning. It shapes whether students attend school, whether they can concentrate in class, and whether staff can work with dignity and safety.
Despite decades of investment, WASH services in many schools around the world still fall short. Part of the reason is that we may not be measuring what matters most: global monitoring largely counts taps and toilets, rather than assessing whether those services work for everyone in the school, at the moment they are needed.
WHO, UNICEF, and others have called for next-generation indicators that capture whether services deliver their intended benefits. The School-WISE Scales are designed to answer that call.
Measuring beyond basic
Global monitoring systems classify school drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene services as basic, limited, or no service, based on the type of facility present and whether it is available or usable at the time of survey. The School-WISE Scales complement these supply-side indicators by assessing whether services are accessible, acceptable, and adequate for the diverse needs of the people who use them.
Questions shown are from the student survey; school staff are asked about the same experiences over the past four weeks. Response options are never, sometimes, or many times.
Revealing unmet need
Every sampled school in Uganda had a basic water service, yet most students still went thirsty.
Across ten schools in Uganda, every participating school met the WHO/UNICEF basic drinking-water standard, yet most students reported going thirsty with no safe water to drink. These data are helping local decision-makers work out how to better meet the needs of students and staff, and to fulfill their right to safe water.
Recent water problems reported at school (%)
Ten schools, all with basic drinking-water services based on JMP criteria.
Apply the scales to advance WASH in schools
Measure what matters
User-centered data reveal whether services are accessible, acceptable, and adequate for diverse needs. These are the conditions that determine whether a service is actually used and supports well-being.
Examine disparities
Conventional school WASH measures describe conditions at the facility level. The individual-level data collected through School-WISE surveys reveal disparities by gender, disability status, and role at the school, giving a clearer picture of how to design efforts that equitably improve conditions.
Inform policy and investment
Survey items and the resulting scores are designed to be comparable across settings. They can identify the populations most acutely affected and, paired with other data, point to the drivers of WASH insecurity, direct investment where it is needed, and engage other sectors by demonstrating the wider benefits of investing in WASH.
A comprehensive conceptualization of WASH
The School-WISE Scales ask about experiences across five domains: water, sanitation, hygiene, menstrual health, and waste management. These align with, and expand upon, the services currently monitored by the WHO/UNICEF JMP.
Availability, perceived safety, and accessibility of water for drinking and for other needs at school.
Accessibility, privacy, safety, and adequacy of sanitation facilities for the people who need them.
Accessibility and adequacy of hygiene facilities for washing hands as desired.
Ability to manage menstrual needs safely, privately, and with dignity while at school.
Adequacy of waste management for maintaining clean classrooms and schoolyards.
Alongside the surveys, study teams complete a structured assessment of each school's WASH infrastructure. Pairing the experiential information with conventional supply-side indicators shows whether service availability consistently translates into better experiences for students and staff, and where conditions need to improve when it does not.
A growing consortium
The School-WISE project is a network of academic institutions, NGOs, and implementing partners. Consortium members implement the surveys through standalone studies or embed them in existing monitoring and evaluation efforts within schools, and contribute the resulting data to a shared, harmonized database.
School-based data collection is complete in Ethiopia, Mozambique, Nepal, Pakistan, Peru, Rwanda, and Uganda, with further sites planned or underway. We are actively seeking partners in high-income countries, South America, the Middle East and North Africa, and Asia.
Join the School-WISE movement
Use the tools
Add the survey to ongoing or planned work
- The tools are developed and our team can help with implementation
- The School-WISE modules can be embedded in ongoing studies or project evaluations
Partners who contribute a site to the scale development study receive early access to the tools, training and technical support, results returned for their own sites, and opportunities for co-authorship.
Fund the work
Help the consortium reach new settings
We now have data from many sites, but the scales need to be implemented in more of them before we can judge how well they perform across diverse settings. We are therefore seeking support for new study sites and for training partner teams. We would welcome a conversation.
Newsletter
The project newsletter carries updates on milestones, new sites, publications, and consortium news. Papers, presentations, and site reports are collected on the Resources page as they become available.
Work in schools? Put the tools to work.
The surveys are developed and ready to pilot, and our team is available to help train staff on using the tools. Partners get early access to the tools, technical support, a place in a global measurement network, and opportunities for co-authorship.
Use the scales