What is the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on primary and secondary schooling in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)? How successful are prevention strategies? This study from the University of Sussex looks at the effect of HIV/AIDS on students and teachers in Botswana, Malawi and Uganda and assesses the actual and likely future impacts on the supply of and demand for educational services.
It is widely accepted that the HIV/AIDS epidemic will seriously affect the education sector in SSA. In 1999, adult HIV prevalence rates were estimated to be 36% in Botswana, 21% in Malawi and 8% in Uganda. Despite the mounting concern about the vulnerability of young people in SSA, there is still not sufficient information available to be able to make a comprehensive assessment of the extent to which adolescents have changed their sexual behaviour in response to the AIDS threat. For SSA, on average, one school in nine will lose a teacher to HIV/AIDS each year over the next decade. It is widely believed that teacher recruitment will have to expand rapidly in order to make up for much higher levels of AIDS-related attrition.
There is little evidence to show that school-based HIV/AIDS education and, more generally, sexual reproductive health and life skills education has had a major impact on sexual behaviour:
- Economic and social/cultural pressures that fuel unsafe sexual behaviour among adolescents remain as high as ever, and in the poorest communities are probably increasing.
- Curriculum design and delivery of HIV/AIDS education remain problematic.
- Teachers lack the competence and commitment to teach these topics. Guidance and counselling services and peer education are also inadequate.
- The educational impact of the epidemic on the most affected children (orphans, children looking after sick family members and children who have AIDS-related illnesses) is complex and multi-faceted.
- Governments have been slow to respond to the orphan crisis. The poorest orphans have most problems at school. Furthermore, schools offer little targeted support for children most directly affected by HIV/AIDS.
- Current arrangements by Ministries of Education, including HIV/AIDS coordinators and focal points, are largely inadequate.
Total AIDS cases will rise drastically in the next decade and, without appropriate levels of support for adult carers, many more children will be caring for the sick. The impact on the education sector will, to a large extent, depend on implementing certain urgent measures, including:
- Developing a professional cadre of life-skills teachers in schools. This should be combined with the continued integration and infusion of HIV/AIDS in the curriculum, focusing on sexual abstinence and the use of condoms.
- Designing and implementing effective national HIV/AIDS strategies based on multi-sectoral community mobilisation.
- Establishing national poverty reduction programmes that support the most basic needs of all children, including those affected by the AIDS epidemic. The provision of home-based care programmes will do much to relieve the burden of care for children in AIDS-affected households.
- Basing morbidity and mortality projections on accurate information of HIV prevalence among school staff, to make them useful for planning purposes.
- Stopping sexual misconduct by school managers and teachers.
