Every teacher should be competent in HIV/Aids education and skills by 2015. This was one of the resolutions reached following a three-day meeting held in Boksburg on Gauteng’s East Rand. About 40 delegates from Commonwealth countries attended.
The aim of the event was to share ideas on how to address the growing negative impact of the HIV/Aids pandemic on the education sector.
Speaker after speaker emphasised the need to fashion a common approach and to develop mechanisms that would slow the death rate of teachers. They also called for increased regional collaboration and the sharing of resources to combat the epidemic.
It was agreed that if no steps were taken, the pandemic would weaken the quality of education. More qualified teachers would be lost, student-teacher contact would be reduced with underqualified teachers taking over and class sizes would increase.
Schools were identified as ideal places to increase awareness of the pandemic among learners and communities.
The issue of orphaned and vulnerable children also came under the spotlight. Children are dropping out of school to look after their households or because they cannot afford school fees. And this reality, they observed, would make it difficult to reach the United Nations’s goal of ‘Education for All”.
The Human Sciences Research Council organised the conference on behalf of the Commonwealth Secretariat (Comsec) and the Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA).
The key resolutions and recommendations taken were:
Teaching and learning materials:
ADEA and Comsec should facilitate and encourage the sharing of existing teaching materials.
Countries are encouraged to learn from one another and be proactive in seeking or providing existing materials.
Approaches to curriculum development:
The curriculum should be based on a broader country approach or framework which includes, among others:
Emphasis on human rights, empowerment and sustainable development;
Social support, especially for most vulnerable groups;
A teaching/learning environment for HIV/Aids impact mitigation, and
Recognising and drawing on existing frameworks or initiatives.
Teacher training:
Teacher development programmes should incorporate life skills and HIV/Aids.
Every teacher should be competent in HIV/Aids education and skills by 2015.
Integrate HIV/Aids into pre-service teaching development programmes.
Implement a programme of in-service training and support by 2010.
Organisations representing teachers’ interests need to be part of all strategic planning, meetings and implementation.
Support for teachers with regard to demand and supply to reach ‘Education for All” by 2015.