School education in india pdf

Translate PDF. As part of a broader epidemiological study we interviewed 10 head teachers to understand the status of, and challenges to, inclusion of oral health education in the curricula of public and private schools in Tamil Nadu, India.

Objectives: There were two main objectives to the study: i to describe the views of head teachers about implementation of oral health education in school curricula; and ii to identify challenges to achieving oral health education in public and private schools in Tamil Nadu.

Method: We implemented a qualitative descriptive design with a purposive sample of ten head teachers who participated in semi-structured interviews. Thematic coding was used to analyse and report the data. Results: There is the lack of oral health education in public and private schools in Tamil Nadu, India. Four main types of barriers to the initiation and implementation of oral health education were: lack of recognition, academic burden, the prioritisation of other health needs, and policy inequities.

Conclusion: Health curricula in Tamil Nadu schools lack integration of oral health education. Limited access to the services, cultural factors, policy deficiencies, insufficient awareness among policy makers, the nature of the education system, and a lack of research contribute to the current situation.

Policy makers should address these barriers to enable and promote oral health education strategies in both private and public schools of Tamil Nadu. Schools provide a platform on which to promote oral health, as more than one billion children are educated worldwide through them.

In principle, good quality health education in schools could benefit school staff, parents and everyone in the wider community Kwan et al. Many common oral health diseases are preventable through good quality health education in schools Kwan et al. In Tamil Nadu, India, there are over 50, schools. The state government is responsible for school administration, and schools are divided into different types depending on the examinations available to students.

All public and most private schools follow the Samacheer Kalvi curriculum or Uniform System of Education. A content analysis of this curriculum suggests that in the primary years of one to five the following oral health topics are included: basic information on parts and types of teeth, tooth decay, and the importance of brushing Geetha Priya et al.

In the middle and high school curriculum, health education is taught through the subject areas of Ariviyal Tamil Tamil language science and environmental education, but neither of these subject areas addresses the issues of oral health.

In , a national rural health mission school initiated an oral health awareness programme in India. This included screening for the early identification and prevention of oro-dental problems Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, a.

In Tamil Nadu, as of , only out of primary health centres provided basic dental treatment such as fillings, scaling and extractions. The dentist to patient ratio in urban areas is 1: 10, and in rural areas 1: , Singh and Purohit, In this context, limited access to dental treatment requires the majority of the Indian population to depend on oral health education alone in order to prevent oral health disease.

Oral health education is frequently neglected in the Indian education curriculum Bhardwaj et al. The effectiveness of oral health education in schools has been demonstrated in various studies Freeman et al. Consequently, oral health education delivered through the school system would reach a substantial number of the population. A literature review identified seven studies conducted in India assessing the effect of school based oral health education on oral health outcomes Parkash et al.

Because school based oral health education is in the early stages of development, the majority of these studies focused on guideline development rather than effective oral health education strategies. A few of the studies, however, comprised interventions to test the effect of oral health education on oral health status Ajithkrishnan et al.

School based oral health education has been shown to have significant effects on knowledge, attitudes, oral hygiene practice and the oral health status of adolescent populations. For example, Parkash et al. In the first phase, students in the and year groups were evaluated for pre-intervention oral health status, together with their knowledge, attitudes and practices.

In the second phase, oral health education was provided by teachers. In the third phase, a post-intervention evaluation was conducted using the same oral health survey instruments Parkash et al. Among the sampled senior aged children the total number of filled teeth increased from 30 at baseline examination to at the final examination, again seen as a positive outcome related to the intervention. There was also a marginal increase in knowledge, attitudes, and practices scores in the final evaluation Parkash et al.

Hence, targeting children and adolescents using the existing infrastructure and human resources at school can be a clinically effective and economically efficient implementation option in the current Indian context. Our initial study, conducted among the adolescent population in Tamil Nadu schools, investigated the oral health literacy of adolescents attending private and public schools in both rural and urban areas Veerasamy et al. The prevalence of dental caries was identified as Hence, effective oral health education is essential to improve the oral health literacy of the adolescent population and in turn improve oral health outcomes in Tamil Nadu.

The current study was conducted to explore the views of head teachers regarding the implementation of oral health education in school curricula, and to understand whether oral health policies are implemented in private and public schools of Tamil Nadu. The findings will be helpful towards developing school-based oral health education programmes.

To ensure the trustworthiness of the study we followed the criteria for credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability Shenton, This study was conducted as a part of a larger oral health epidemiological study among an adolescent school population Veerasamy et al. Participants for the epidemiological study were randomly selected from two districts of Tamil Nadu; urban participants were recruited from Chennai city, and rural participants from the Thanjavur district.

The Chennai city corporation is organised into 15 zones consisting of wards. Five of the 15 zones in Chennai city were randomly selected. The wards within each zone were also randomly selected and private and public schools in each ward were listed; eight randomly selected schools were approached for permission to recruit participants for the study and four schools accepted to participate.

The Thanjavur district is divided into three revenue divisions, namely Thanjavur, Kumbakonam, and Pattukottai. Eight schools were randomly selected across all revenue divisions and all selected schools accepted to participate in the study.

A quota sampling system was then used to invite head teachers from all selected schools to participate in the study. Four urban two from public and two from private and six rural three from public and three from private school head teachers accepted this invitation.

Two head teachers declined to participate in the study. Hence, the participants for the qualitative interviews were recruited from private and public schools in both rural and urban areas of Tamil Nadu. In India, each school is administered by one head teacher who is solely responsible for institutional planning and management. He or she decides how to use the available resources and how to initiate steps to mobilise these resources and involve teachers, parents, and other organisations to achieve quality education for students.

Hence, head teachers were invited to participate in an interview and were given an envelope that contained the research information, consent forms, and a list of the questions that would be asked in the interview. Informed written consent to participate in the interview was received prior to the interview.

Only one head teacher opted to be interviewed in English. The interviews ranged between 15 and 25 minutes in duration, and were recorded using Evernote software on an iPad. Data were transferred to a computer on the same day. Field notes were taken before and after each interview, and these were used during analysis of the data.

The field notes contained details needed to understand the school culture and infrastructure. The interviews were transcribed and later translated into English by the lead researcher. None of the head teachers who reviewed their transcript requested changes.

Interviews were initially analysed question by question in two phases. Firstly, each interview transcript was coded and analysed to identify categories and themes specific to the original research questions, namely; what is the extent of oral health education occurring in schools?

And, what other challenges are there in implementing oral health education in Tamil Nadu schools? The responses provided by the head teachers were organised and analysed through a sequence of organising, summarising and interpreting the data Braun and Clarke, By reading and re-reading the transcripts, codes were identified. The codes were then categorised according to whether the respondent was from a private, public, rural or urban school to enable a description of differences and similarities between school type and location.

During the interviews, it was noted that head teachers displayed a lack of awareness of what oral health encompasses. In the second phase of the analysis, new ideas which did not specifically relate to the original research questions were identified from the data, analysed and coded separately.

One of the new ideas that emerged during the second phase of the analysis was the lack of food and other basic needs in schools, especially for adolescent females. Finally, in the verification phase, conclusions were drawn from combining all the categories in the first two phases of analysis. Four overarching themes were identified. Findings On completion of ten interviews, it was evident that oral health education was not well recognised in any of the schools.

Hence it was concluded at this point that data saturation had been achieved. All of the head teachers had more than 20 years teaching experience and all had worked as a head teacher between years in their current school, or in schools with a similar curriculum. The four key themes that emerged were: lack of recognition, academic burden, prioritisation of other health needs, and policy inequities.

Like skin, eyesight related illness including provision of free spectacles , general health etc. But…see…nothing special for oral health. Further questioning revealed that a nearby private dental university and private dentists through the Indian Dental Association IDA funded some oral health screening in their schools.

Hence, none of the schools had implemented any oral health policies, however, they allowed private dental schools and dentists from the Indian Dental Association to offer occasional oral health screening to the children in their schools.

No regular oral health check-ups were provided to their students, and the head teachers acknowledged that the dental screenings were ineffective without a proper follow-up. Ideas about the nature of oral health education differed between the head teachers irrespective of the schools with which they were involved.

One of the head teachers indicated that both health and oral health education should be increased. Another head teacher indicated that oral health education should be included in the high school curriculum, as parents tend to ignore the oral health of older children.

Another head teacher expressed that oral health education should be discussed as part of an existing science based language. Not enough emphasis has been given to oral health. None of the syllabus covered oral health education HT7 Urban Public Academic burden When teachers were asked their opinions about improving oral health education in the current school curriculum, half of the head teachers agreed that oral health education should be enhanced. Conversely, other head teachers reported that improving oral health education in the curriculum would become a burden for children, and there would not be enough time to concentrate on health and oral health education due to the volume of academic assignments and examinations.

I think what they have is more than enough for now. I think already our curriculum covers what they need to know for their age. However, challenges do remain. An estimated 6. Out of students, 29 per cent of girls and boys drop out of school before completing the full cycle of elementary education, and often they are the most marginalised children. Source: SRI-IMRB Surveys, and Around 50 per cent of adolescents do not complete secondary education, while approximately 20 million children not attending pre-school.

Source Rapid Survey of Children MWCD Half of primary school-going children — which constitutes nearly 50 million children — not achieving grade appropriate learning levels. These changes are in the education policy enabling environment and due to the emergence of COVID and its impact on education services. These are:. Girls and boys including the most marginalised will enjoy sustained and equitable benefit from quality education with learning outcomes focusing on foundational learning and life skills.

UNICEF is working closely with the Government of India, state governments in 17 states, civil society, academic institutions and private sector. While primary engagement will be with the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Women and Child Development, more involvement with ministries of Tribal, Minority and Social Justice Departments, Disaster Management Authorities will be essential especially in terms of ensuring the delivery of quality education to the most marginalized children which forms the centre of our work.

To achieve the outcome - Girls and boys, particularly the most disadvantaged, participate in quality education with learning outcomes at grade appropriate levels by The programme. Rights based and life cycle approach to building skills for empowerment. The Indian Education System is one of the largest in the world with more than 1.