5.2 The Curriculum Policy Context
5.2.3 School-level Policy
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Arguably, the Lesotho national policy is aimed at changing the schools by improving resources and infrastructure and changing gender norms in and around the education institutions. For example, there are newly built schools including the remote areas of the country, improved classrooms and reduced educational expenses to make education accessible to all Lesotho young people. The teacher-training curriculum at LCE and NUL has been reviewed to include Life Skills Education which covers issues of HIV and AIDS. At the school level, the LSE syllabi were introduced and workshops were conducted to prepare teachers for the teaching of LSE. However, the success of these policies is dependent on the ways in which they are understood and implemented at the institutional level (discussed in the section below) and ultimately on the extent to which they impact on the lives of young people of school-going age.
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class time-tables for two periods a week. In the grade 8, 9 and 10 time-tables, the subject appeared mostly on Fridays and in the last teaching periods of the day. Obviously, two periods per week is not enough time for a subject which covers so many topics of high importance, including HIV and AIDS.
Teachers’ discomfort with covering controversial subjects such as HIV and AIDS and sexuality in the curriculum suggests a high likelihood that many of them use the limited time allocated to Life skills on the timetable as the reason for them to avoid teaching about these issues.
To establish whether the Life Skills curriculum in the school included HIV and AIDS and related topics, I then looked at the daily lessons plans of the three teachers Ms. Keletso, Mrs. Mampho and Mrs. Mants’ebo who were earlier released from the school to attend a three-day workshop in Life Skills Education in 2007. Surprisingly, none of the three lesson plans covered any topics related to HIV and AIDS. Further, in the monthly and quarterly tests from January to August in 2013 when data collection for this study was undertaken, assessment of learning did not include any aspect of HIV and AIDS. The teachers’ explanations for this are discussed in the sections below. The principal confirmed that she was aware that teachers did not address HIV and AIDS in their teaching from her class visits and monitoring of lesson preparation and records of work done in the classrooms. Further, the minutes of a staff meeting (held on Wednesday 15 March, 2013) indicated that teachers admitted skipping HIV and AIDS topics in their teaching. The reasons they cited included the fact that in Lesotho sex is a taboo topic, particularly between children and adults (including teachers). Nobody talks about it publicly. Thus, teachers found it unnerving to talk about it in class. Further, without adequate training in the content and pedagogy of the subject, teachers found it difficult to teach the subject.
In the same staff meeting, the three teachers assigned to teach Life Skills Education pleaded with their colleagues to help them teach HIV and AIDS- related topics. They indicated that they did not
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feel comfortable to discuss such topics with young people; they felt ashamed and embarrassed. The minutes of the meeting indicate that in response, the principal, Mrs. Phetheho, as well as Mrs. Tšepe, Mr. Lebopo and Mr. Seboko volunteered to teach the topics in Grades 8, 9 and 10 in age- and gender- segregated groups. In informal conversations with the volunteers, they stated different reasons for volunteering to teach these topics. For example, Mrs. Phetheho indicated that it is one of her duties as the principal to ensure that education policies are implemented in the school. Mrs. Tšepe stated that she was interested in helping out and that she would learn by interacting with the learners and the HIV and AIDS content. Mr Lebopo and Mr. Seboko explained that they have been affected by the HIV and AIDS epidemic and therefore wanted to dedicate their efforts to teaching young people about HIV and AIDS and to learn to help their loved ones infected with HIV. Mrs. Phetheho and Mrs.
Tšepe volunteered to teach girls while Mr. Lebopo and Mr. Seboko volunteered to teach boys. The staff meeting also agreed to schedule the lessons on HIV and AIDS on the last Wednesday of every month after the sports for a period of two hours from 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm, obviously as an extra- curricular activity rather than a mainstream subject. According to Walcott, Chenneville and Tarquini (2011) in many public schools, sexuality education and HIV and AIDS are taught “occasionally” and are generally considered non -essential courses that are taught as small portions of physical education or health classes. The Wednesdays did not appear on the official time-table of the school. Instead they were marked “HIV and AIDS special day” on the 2013 calendar on the wall in the staff room.
It was agreed that the four teachers teaching HIV and AIDS topics would prepare assessment tasks, mark the learners’ work and provide marks to Life Skills Education teachers to add to the learners’
marks/grades in that subject.
The staff gave the principal and the teachers’ representative on the School Governing Board the mandate to table this matter for the Board’s approval. The plan was to be presented to the parents for their approval and participation in the development of the school HIV and AIDS Education Policy.
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In an interview with the principal, she indicated that while the School Board did approve of the teachers’ strategy of tackling the teaching of HIV and AIDS topics in the school, the parents had differing views. One group opposed the plan, suggesting that this would encourage their children to experiment with sex, while the other approved the plan, arguing that teaching learners about HIV and AIDS was vital to reducing infections in the school and in the community. The principal indicated that the issue was voted on and the majority of parents agreed that teachers should go on to teach the learners about HIV and AIDS in the best way they thought would benefit the learners and help them to curb the spread of HIV.
The foregoing discussion illustrates the status of HIV and AIDS education in the school curriculum.
The fact that it is not reflected on the time-table might, on the one hand, be a function of the national policy (that is it is not a stand-alone subject, but is rather part of the Life skills curriculum). On the other hand, this might illustrate the reluctance of the school community to teach HIV and AIDS and related topics as part of the official curriculum. This state of affairs might lead to the subject being ignored or being poorly taught. The fact that it does not have a place on the time-table may be interpreted as unimportant for the learners and just a waste of time. Teachers might not feel committed to teaching it and might not prepare properly to teach it. Poor planning and poor preparation may result in poor performance on the part of teachers and learners. This thesis assumes that in order to enable effective implementation of the curriculum, teachers need to be adequately trained for the role.
The next section addresses the second research question: How are teachers trained for their role as HIV and AIDS educators in schools?
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