A Fresh Start to Improving the Quality and Equity of Education
Updated - Monday 11 October 2004
FRESH ( Focusing Resources on Effective School Health) promotes the focusing of resources on the school-aged child and has developed a common framework as a starting point for an effective health component in a broader effort to achieve more child-friendly schools. This framework includes a core of simple and familiar interventions that capture the best practices from programme experiences. These interventions, when supported by effective inter-sectorial and community partnerships, can even be implemented in the poorest schools and in hard-to-reach rural areas, as well as in more accessible urban areas.
On the basis of the framework, the individual countries are expected to develop their own strategy to match local needs. The four core interventions proposed are:
- Provision of safe water and sanitation. An essential step towards a healthy physical learning environment.
- Skills based health education. This approach to health education focuses on the development of knowledge, attitude, and life skills needed to deal with health and social issues. The development of specific psycho-social skills and the opportunity to use and practice them are central to effective skills-based health education. When individuals have these skills, they are more likely to adopt and sustain a healthy lifestyle during schooling and the rest of their lives.
- School-based health and nutrition services. Schools can effectively deliver a variety of health and nutritional services provided that the services are simple, safe and familiar, address problems that are prevalent within the community and are recognized as important.
- Health-related school policies. Health policies in schools can support the three interventions above. In addition, these policies could help promote inclusion and equity in the school environment if addressing issues like the further education of pregnant school girls, young mothers and children (in)directly affected by HIV.
Apart from the four core interventions, the FRESH start approach discerns three supporting activities that provide the context in which the interventions can be implemented.
These supporting activities are:
- Effective partnerships between teachers and health workers and between the education and health sectors
- Effective community partnerships: promoting a positive interaction between the school and the community which is fundamental to the success and sustainability of any school improvement process
- Pupil awareness and participation, as children must be important participants in all aspects of school health programmes and not simply the beneficiaries
For further info, visit the FRESH official Website:
