Ghana blog: Healthy Schools Programme
Link Community Development is a charity of nine partner organisations working to improve access to quality primary education in sub-Saharan Africa.
Kate Armstrong is sending us a series of updates on their projects. She previously documented some of the school infrastructure and access challenges as well as connections being fostered between classrooms in Ghana and Scotland. In her penultimate post she tells us about the Healthy Schools Programme they are currently working on.
“Hello, I’m based in Edinburgh where Link facilitates educational partnerships between Scottish and African schools and raises awareness of the challenges facing African education. I recently spent a month in Ghana to see how our projects are impacting on schools in the rural Ashanti and Upper East regions.
BLOG 3: HEALTHY SCHOOLS PROGRAMME
For teachers and pupils in Ghana ill health poses a serious challenge to quality education and isolated rural schools like Chiana Primary, located an hour’s drive from the nearest to town, are the worst affected.
Chiana is in the Upper East Region, as far as possible from the capital Accra, next to the border with Burkina Faso. It is one of the poorest regions in Ghana and one where receiving a quality education is especially challenging. It has the highest number of out of school children in the country and schools are visibly under resourced and understaffed. Upper East is also one of the most deprived regions in Ghana with high rates of poverty and child malnutrition.
Chiana Primary is typical of schools in this region. The school has hundreds of pupils, but no toilets or water source. Diarrhoea and intestinal worms are two of the biggest reasons for ill health among school children in Ghana, causing children to miss school and affecting their ability to concentrate in class. Worms cause malnutrition and anaemia and it is estimated that 80% of rural children in Ghana are anaemic. Malnutrition has a severe impact on children’s development, especially at an early stage, and this can affect their learning abilities for life.
Diarrhoea and intestinal worms are spread through contaminated water and unhygienic practices. Although pupils learn about the importance of sanitation in school, a lack of facilities makes it impossible for them to put this learning into practice. At Chiana the pupils use the bushes around the school as a toilet, where germs can easily spread into the school and the teachers tell me there are sometimes dangerous snakes. Without hand washing facilities germs can spread quickly, especially in overcrowded classrooms. The children also have to leave school and go into the surrounding community to find water to drink, something which is essential for health and learning, especially in hot weather, but once they leave school pupils sometimes don’t come back to class.
HIV/AIDS affects the attendance of pupils and teachers alike. The prevalence of HIV in Ghana is 2%, compared to 0.1% in the UK. Illness among teachers is a major cause of absenteeism, as is taking time off to care for sick relatives or attend funerals. In understaffed rural schools, if a teacher is absent their class can be left unsupervised for the whole day. Children whose parents or relatives are ill, may not enrol in school or drop out early to provide care and to assume other household duties. The division of labour within the household means girls are particularly affected because they have greater responsibility for caring tasks than their brothers.
Link has launched the Healthy Schools Programme to address the issues of ill health which undermine school performance in the Upper East Region. According to the WHO, an effective school health programme can be one of the most cost-effective investments to simultaneously improve education and health. Working with the district education and health departments, schools and their communities will be supported to create and deliver Healthy School Plans which identify the health issues to be addressed and plan to tackle these in a collaborative way.
Some of the priority areas for Healthy School Plans are:
- Supporting schools to act as centres of health promotion and education for pupils and the wider community.
- Improving environmental health at school, focusing on access by pupils to safe drinking water and safe and hygienic latrines.
- Delivering health care in schools – focusing on first aid, basic life-saving skills, de-worming programmes, immunisation and counselling.
- Exploring ways in which the nutritional needs of learners can be addressed, through initiatives such as school gardens.
- Addressing the needs of learners and teachers infected with HIV or affected by it.
- Ensuring that schools are child-friendly to both girl child and boy child learners and that specific gender needs are met (e.g. safe and hygienic facilities for female hygiene, safe school premises and access to appropriate counselling).
At Chiana Primary the head teacher is looking forward to improving the learning conditions at her school, as well as the opportunity for greater interaction with the community, both of which she hopes will encourage more parents to send their children to school.
For general information about our work in Scotland and Africa please visit www.lcdinternational.org.
Related posts:
Ghana blog 1: The Challenges Facing Primary Education.
Ghana blog 2: The Link Schools Programme.
Global learning experiences for Teachers.
