Charlene Smith reports on how Aids will change the face of schools in the near future
Over the next decade Aids will change every facet of our lives. The traditional school day could disappear with travelling teachers giving focussed lessons for a short while before moving on and the community ensuring children do homework and revision.
Schools could become providers of health care and food to a growing army of Aids orphans. And school syllabi could change to become far more work-oriented than they are at present. These were proposals that came from a United Nations (UN) workshop with delegates from 14 countries in the region, in Lusaka late last year.
Southern Africa, with 70% of the world’s 16-million Aids orphans, faces an unmitigated disaster as orphans drop out of school and social nets, to become wandering bands of scavengers. However, new thinking will see schools become more than just educational institutions but essential hubs for these children. At the same time teachers are among the worst affected and infected sectors of communities across the region.
By 2010, the United States Census Bureau estimates there will be 44-million Aids orphans worldwide. By that time around 35% of children under the age of 15, in 11 eastern and southern African nations will have lost one or both parents.
The “1999 Progress of Nations Report” noted that South Africa, is one of seven countries where the number of children orphaned by HIV/Aids between 1994 and 1997 increased by more than 400%. In KwaZulu-Natal, it is estimated that in 2000 there were between 197,000 and 278,000 HIV/Aids orphans — or, 5.8-8.8% of all children. By 2015, when the epidemic is expected to peak, orphans will constitute around 12% of the total population of South Africa — or about 4.8 million children.
The United Nations Security Council early last year warned that a failure to assist orphans would see them develop as regional security threats as these uneducated, uncared for, desperate children take what they can to survive. A UN-based international summit on Aids in mid-2001 will again take a hard look at the challenges faced by a rapidly growing cohort of orphans.
While some children orphaned — those under the age of four — are probably infected too and will probably die, older children are usually HIV-negative and healthy at the time of their parents’ death. However, in Zimbabwe as an example, research has shown that of the thousands of Aids orphans in that country, not a single orphan is in secondary school; most drop out of school when their parents get bedridden and few return. Older children have the burden of caring for younger siblings when parents die and child-headed households are common across the continent.
In October, last year, revised 2000 estimates from the US Census Bureau, found that 15.6-million children under 15 have already lost their mother or both parents to Aids or other causes of death. UNAid says “children without parental protection lose opportunities for school, health care, development, nutrition, shelter, and even their rights to a decent and humane existence”.
At the Zambian conference held by UNAid, Unicef and USAid, participants said effective national leadership was essential. “The issue is how to ensure that leaders are affording the orphan crisis the highest priority and are doing all they can to protect the next generation. Providing information to governments was not enough; what was needed was a coalition of civil society — a movement — to pressurise governments to respond to the crisis.”
Delegates noted that education is the principal weapon against the spread of HIV/Aids, and the best defence against abuse, neglect and impoverishment. Factors seeing high dropout rates of Aids orphans are not only related to a lack of parental guidance or money to pay for school costs, but “the poor quality of teaching in schools, and a perceived irrelevance of schooling in relation to the job market”.
Delegates came up with some innovative ideas, which education departments across the region still have to consider. “It was suggested that if children could not get to a school, the school should somehow be made accessible to them.” Several models were discussed:
Community schools — run by communities, charging no fees, requiring no uniforms, providing almost all educational materials and using teachers from within or close to the community, often on a voluntary basis and with little training.
Satellite schools — covering a wide geographic area, providing resources to teachers who travel to visit different communities to provide short periods of formal teaching, leaving children with assignments to be done under supervision by the community.
Distance learning — using interactive radio (television, or the Internet) teaching materials, under the supervision of members of the community.
Schools as comprehensive, community-based organisations — teachers are joined by those with a traditional role in society (leaders, healers, birth-attendants, crafts-persons…) in collectively educating children. Children, in turn, could go into the community to support care-givers, engage in peer education, and gather data for community research programmes.
Long-term welfare assistance has a positive and sustainable effect in terms of building educated and healthy national human capacity. Short-term and piece-meal assistance has little if any long-term benefit.”
UNaid in its report says Aids is impacting on the region so badly, that research initiatives “may be necessary to plan and monitor interventions, but it is important not to delay responses while waiting for data, but rather to modify responses when the data is available.”
Where should orphans live when the whole family has died, or only a senile grandparent is left? Research has shown that “the extended family, foster family, temporary children’s homes, SOS-type villages, permanent institutions — are still open for debate. New Ugandan data shows that orphans in foster families receiving some external support fared better than those in extended families. “Perhaps most challenging of all: by extending the lives of HIV-infected parents (with antiretrovirals), the orphaning of their children can be postponed.”
Delegates suggested schools should become a focal point for feeding schemes, support to caregivers, or one-stop orphan care support centres with free education to needy children. Schools should be providing life-skills and vocational training to pupils, to equip them as income earners.
— The Teacher/Mail & Guardian, February, 2001.