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FRESH calls for coordinated activities in four key areas: school policy development, school environment (including safe water and sanitation), skills-based health education, and school-based health and nutrition services.7 School health programming, for example, can address poor health and nutrition including micronutrient deficiencies such as iron, iodine and vitamin A that affect cognitive functioning. The growing possibility that ART will be more universally available means that there must be ongoing related educational programmes. These programmes must ensure that communities learn about the implications of the treatment, emphasise the need to maintain safe behaviours even after starting treatment, and reinvigorate efforts to get people to learn their HIV status as a key entry point for treatment initiatives. ART and treatment education, in turn, put additional pressure on the need to step up prevention education as there is evidence that treatment can mask the presence of the disease and lull people into a complacency that allows practices that encourage transmission (UNAIDS IATT on Education 2006). It is clear that many learners have to work to keep themselves and those close to them alive. Thus, issues such as entrepreneurship and vocational training need to be addressed. In addition, much of what was learnt in homes such as customs and traditional knowledge could be lost if education systems do not consider how to ensure that this is passed to the next generation. Education systems must also target parents and extended families for adult learning programmes that encourage them to communicate openly, positively and accurately on HIV and AIDS. Research in a number of countries has revealed that many parents want to talk to young people about sex, but do not feel that they have the appropriate skills to do so. The establishment of parental education programmes, parent teacher associations (PTAs), parents’ education committees, and the involvement of parents in curriculum development can improve parents’ own HIV-related knowledge and encourage support of school-based and non-formal education for their children. The HIV and AIDS pandemic also provides an opportunity to deliver education on solidarity and values that are important to fight all kinds of stigma and discrimination, therefore contributing to promoting a peaceful coexistence in a rapidly changing world. The importance of life skills approach-es is critical.8 Life skills approaches require that educational processes be consistent with what is being taught. Children and adults must be equipped with the knowledge, values, capacities and behaviours to take decisions that are in the best interest of themselves and others. Learners with HIV or coming from homes where one or more family members has HIV often suffer stigma and discrimination from classmates and teachers, or from parents and communities who have sometimes loudly protested the idea that these students should be in the same classroom with the same rights as other children.
Through a rights-based framework, members of the IATT on Education are expanding how schools and non-formal education conceptualise and approach the learning environment in ways that include consideration of HIV and AIDS. This includes effective responses to pervasive forms of violence, the establishment of adequate hygiene and sanitation facilities accessible to all, and support for linkages with health and nutrition services in the vicinity. The goal is to ensure safe, secure and supportive learning environments. The HIV and AIDS pandemic has put the spotlight on violence in education, particularly gender-based violence. Vio-lence in all of its forms—any action with the intention of causing emotional or physical harm to a person—will clearly affect learning and may increase the vulnerability of learners to HIV and AIDS. Often directed at people because of their sex, ethnic identity, perceived sex-ual orientation, or physical and mental abilities, violence in learning places can take the form of bullying, verbal abuse and name-calling, sexual coercion, and abuse including rape and physical harm. The perpetrators may often be other students, but can also include teacher and other education staff. The particular vulnerability of girls with regard to the range of violence they may experience must continue to be highlighted. Numerous instances have been documented of children affected by HIV experiencing a range of subtle and more obvious forms of violence, from rejection, name-calling and physical aggression, to not being able to participate in physical education or share sanitary facilities, to the denial of education. A number of IATT members have sup-ported approaches to address violence in schools. For example, UNESCO’s Associated Schools Project Network has held campaigns against violence in schools, conducted studies on youth and violence, promoted conflict mediation, and undertaken efforts to document problems associated with corporal punishment in schools and the elaboration of alternative forms of maintaining discipline in the classroom. UNICEF has also held regional consultations on violence against children. In a meeting in Slovenia in 2005, for example, participants from all of the countries of the European and Central Asian Region identified steps to take at domestic and regional levels to address violence against children.
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