This article addresses a particular area of research in the field of education and child protection: the protective role of schools in the contexts of HIV/AIDS and poverty. Such adverse situations may lead children not to enroll in school or to drop out of school and subsequently to be subjected to abusive child labor and, in some cases, the worst forms of child labor (WFCL).1 I argue that the mutually reinforcing relationship of HIV/AIDS and poverty in many countries is leading to increasing child labor and that schools need to respond to this situation through policies that protect vulnerable children from dropping out and from abuse when they are at school. Further, I demonstrate that the HIV/AIDS pandemic has led to a breakdown of traditional and family‐based safety networks in many communities, adding to the difficult situation experienced by orphans, children who are heads of families, and children who are caregivers to sick parents. The school emerges as the institution that can take over some of the protective and socializing roles that parents and the community have traditionally provided.