With the youthful population being highly endangered by HIV/AIDS from early 1990s, the Government looked up to teaching it in schools as an effective prevention strategy. The Government introduced HIV/AIDS education in secondary schools in 2000 through a stand-alone approach.
Through this strategy, HIV/AIDS was taught as a separate subject in the timetable. This went on up to 2003 when the national curriculum was reviewed and HIV/AIDS aspects infused and integrated into various subjects.
However, as time went on, concern has been growing among stakeholders about the matter. For instance, previous surveys carried out in Kisumu County revealed the rather negative attitude among the learners and teachers about the subject was hampering teaching of HIV/AIDS. Furthermore, some people began holding the view that HIV/AIDS education was getting a rather low consideration in most of the schools.
This study therefore aimed at identifying aspects of HIV/AIDS education that are taught in the schools as well as determining the percentage of teachers who are trained to teach it. In addition, the study was concerned with finding out teaching methods and the learning resources that are used in teaching it.
Since HIV/AIDS is supposed to be taught as integrated and infused in the other subjects, the study majorly focused on how its aspects are taught during the lessons of English, Kiswahili, History, Biology and CRE.
Interestingly, only 30 per cent of teachers interviewed had the training on HIV/AIDS aspects - 12 per cent through pre-service and 18 per cent through in-service. This percentage falls far below the Ministry of Education’s recommendations. According to the ministry, all those teaching HIV/AIDS education ought to have received prior training on it.
The study also found out that Refusal and Communication Skills, whose mastery by the learners greatly contributes towards HIV/AIDS prevention, are hardly taught in most of the schools. This is attributed to inadequate training on HIV/AIDS among the teachers. Most of the teachers (85 per cent) end up just teaching the basic aspects of the subject, such as transmission modes and basic concepts (75 per cent).
Besides that, majority of the teachers use lecture method to teach HIV/AIDS, which is contrary to the recommendations of the ministry and health promotion specialists. The preferred participatory methods such as group discussion, drama and songs, storytelling and role-plays, which are widely considered as the most effective methods of teaching it, are hardly used.
Moreover, the study revealed that there is overdependence on the various subjects’ class texts as the teaching resource. This is the prevailing scenario despite the fact that some of the subjects, such as History and Christian Religious Education have very scanty information on HIV/AIDS infused in their topics. Other learning materials such as newspapers, posters, video and audiotapes were not available in almost all the schools.
It is therefore evident that HIV/AIDS education is not given the kind of emphasis it deserves by the government and most learning institutions.
The Ministry should therefore ensure a well organised and systematic training of teachers on HIV/AIDS education is conducted both in pre-service and in-service modes. Training of HIV/AIDS educators should begin at teacher-training institutions, and then can be followed by in-service.
Teachers should also put more emphasis on HIV/AIDS aspects that equip students with prevention skills instead of just teaching its basic facts. Teachers need to take into consideration the fact that teaching HIV/AIDS prevention is different from teaching other subjects in the school curriculum because it is a life skill. Its delivery should thus involve more interaction and active participation of the learners.
In addition, teachers should diversify learning materials for their learners, which should even include use of the Internet.