A sector at risk: HIV/AIDS and Education
Education sector workers - teachers, school leaders and support staff - are a vulnerable category of the population in many sub-Saharan African countries and in rapidly developing high prevalence geographic zones such as the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific and Eastern Europe. Disability and mortality rates among teachers especially deprive affected countries of some of their most educated and skilled human resources.
Costs to education and training systems have increased in the form of redeployed sick teachers, training of new teachers to replace those who cannot work or who die, and overcrowded classes when teachers cannot be replaced. Access and quality suffer in many rural areas deprived of qualified teachers. School directors and teachers are often not trained or supported to deal with the HIV/AIDS crisis within schools, including large numbers of HIV/AIDS orphans, further exacerbating failure and repetition rates that are indicators of decline in educational quality.
As a complement to other efforts on preventive education at national and international level since 2004 the ILO has implemented an action programme to help constituents supply an education sector workplace approach to HIV/AIDS. The programme has produced model education sector workplace policies for use by staff at various levels based on the key principles of the ILO Code of Practice on HIV/AIDS and the World of Work and accompanying training manual. The education sector policies are designed to reflect the specifics of the education sector and have been revised and validated at tripartite workshops (representatives from Ministries of Education, Labour, education sector worker unions, private employers and national AIDS councils) in the Caribbean and in southern Africa in 2005.
Resources
Additional links to information on HIV/AIDS
and education
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sites external to the ILO |
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