ABSTRACT:
Background. Schools are important contexts that shape children’s health and education outcomes as they grow up. This study investigates the role of school violence on later violence victimisation and perpetration among young people in Luwero, Uganda. Methods. We used three waves of the Contexts of Violence Against Children (CoVAC) cohort study conducted between 2014 and 2022 (n=2312) in primary schools. We constructed three exposure measures of child-reported past year school violence: two at the individual level (any violence and violence relative to peers within a child’s school) and one for lower violence school contexts. Outcomes were past-year physical or sexual violence victimisation in adolescence and adulthood. We fit sex-stratified multilevel logistic regression models with random intercepts for schools. Results. The prevalence of past year school violence was 81.6%. The median school-level prevalence of violence was 87.6% (IQR: 74.9%-93.4%). The later life effects of school violence varied by age and sex. Individual experience of school violence in childhood increased the odds of physical violence victimisation for young women (aOR: 1.43, 95% CI: 1.04, 1.96) and perpetration for young men (aOR: 1.48, 95% CI: 1.05, 2.07) in adolescence. Being in a less violent school was protective against physical violence victimisation in adolescence for young men (aOR: 0.52, 95% CI: 0.26, 1.03). Cross-level interaction terms suggest individual experience of violence increases risk of violence in adolescence even in protective school contexts among young men. Experiencing more school violence than peers in primary school consistently increased the risk of physical or sexual violence victimisation among men and women in adolescence and adulthood. Prevention of violence across all types of school contexts should be a key part of child and adolescent health and education programming both to prevent harm as children grow up and to avert later life violence.