A/HRC/45/24 education for democratic citizenship and human rights. The course was piloted and evaluated for further improvement. 22. Some responding States referred to human rights training programmes for education personnel beyond teachers, especially schoolmasters. In Slovenia, the National School for Leadership Education provides training programmes for head teachers on managing schools as a learning environment where citizenship education is implemented. The modules of the headship licence programme also contain human rights topics, such as implementing human and children’s rights in school. In the period 2017–2018, the National Agency for Education and the Human Rights Centre of Finland jointly developed a learning module for educational management and school leadership on human rights in the education sector. The module was rolled out in cooperation with the regional State administrative agencies, the Trade Union of Education in Finland and the Finnish Association of Principals, which helped to reach out to a good range of school heads nationally. Belarus provides continuing education programmes on human rights for the managers of education institutions and social educators. 4. Learning environment 23. States have reported programmes aimed at creating a learning environment conducive to human rights education. In Cyprus, the Observatory on School Violence developed and supported schools in implementing conflict-resolution and anti-bullying programmes. During the school year 2018/19, 59 schools, from the nursery to secondary school levels, have received training and support in managing conflict situations at school and combating bullying. In Costa Rica, as part of the violence prevention programme of the national development plan, around 1,000 teachers and technical staff from various primary and secondary schools have been trained on preventing violence at school. The Ministry of Public Education of Costa Rica promotes schools as safe spaces for the free expression of gender identity and sexual orientation and, to that end, distributes protocols of action addressing bullying against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people. 24. Some responding States highlighted initiatives against racism, xenophobia and related intolerance at schools. For example, the National Agency for Education of Sweden has developed, in collaboration with the Living History Forum, a public agency under the Ministry of Culture, and various education institutions, a series of courses on how to combat xenophobia and racism in preschools and schools. In Cyprus, since the school year 2014/15, in line with the code of conduct against racism, the Cyprus Pedagogical Institute has provided schools and teachers with a detailed plan on how to prevent and address incidents of racism and created a school network across Cyprus, holding regular meetings at which representatives of schools from various districts have the opportunity to exchange experiences and views in implementing the code of conduct. C. Higher education 25. A number of States, including Belarus, Cambodia, Georgia, Lithuania, the Niger, Qatar, Romania, Slovenia and Sweden, reported that human rights are taught at higher education institutions as part of degree programmes in law, social sciences or humanities. Paññasastra University of Cambodia and the University of El Salvador offer a specialized postgraduate programme in human rights. In Sweden, students can obtain undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral degrees in human rights at various universities across the country. Some universities in Lithuania also offer summer school programmes with a human rights focus. In Slovenia, at the University of Maribor, various workshops on human rights and related topics are organized for university personnel in order to improve and broaden their competencies. 26. In 2015, the Higher Education Authority of Sweden mapped how human rights were taught in higher education programmes in various professional fields. Special attention was given to assessing knowledge on sexual and gender-based violence and violence against children. The result of the mapping exercise indicated that, whereas a majority of educational programmes at universities offered general human rights content, the teaching of sexual and gender-based violence still needed improvement and that higher education institutions needed to formulate human rights learning outcomes in order to ensure transparency, sustainability and adequate human rights competencies among graduating 8