Factors shaping the HIV-competence of two primary schools in rural Zimbabwe

Catherine Campbell,Louise Andersen,Alice Mutsikiwa,Erica Pufall,Morten Skovdal,Claudius Madanhire,Connie Nyamukapa,Simon Gregson

doi:10.1016/j.ijedudev.2014.05.007

Abstract

We present multi-method case studies of two Zimbabwean primary schools – one rural and one small-town. The rural school scored higher than the small-town school on measures of child well-being and school attendance by HIV-affected children. The small-town school had superior facilities, more teachers with higher morale, more specialist HIV/AIDS activities, and an explicit religious ethos. The relatively impoverished rural school was located in a more cohesive community with a more critically conscious, dynamic and networking headmaster. The current emphasis on HIV/AIDS-related teacher training and specialist school-based activities should be supplemented with greater attention to impacts of school leadership and the nature of the school-community interface on the HIV-competence of schools.

Highlights

School attendance often has positive impacts on the well-being of HIV-affected and HIV-vulnerable children in sub-Saharan Africa (Gregson et al, 2004; Nyamukapa et al, 2010)
Focusing first on features of the school, compared to the smalltown school, our rural school had three key disadvantages: (i) fewer facilities; (ii) a higher pupil– teacher ratio with teachers paid less than their small-town counterparts; and (iii) fewer formal HIV-related activities
Viewing schools as spaces of engagement between learners, teachers, and less often NGOs, health services and local community residents, we have provided comparative case studies of factors impacting on school responses to HIV-affected children in two very different settings

Summary

Introduction

School attendance often has positive impacts on the well-being of HIV-affected and HIV-vulnerable children in sub-Saharan Africa (Gregson et al, 2004; Nyamukapa et al, 2010). We define an ‘HIV competent community’ as a context in which community members work together to provide optimal protection and support to those affected by HIV (Nhamo et al, 2010; Campbell et al, 2012). They share a sense of responsibility for doing so, backed up by confidence that they have the individual and collective strength to tackle them (Haslam et al, 2009; Sliep and Meyer-Weitz, 2003) Such a community ideally has strong external relationships with outside support, welfare and NGO agencies that are able to assist in accessing social and economic resources for responding to the challenges of HIV/AIDS (Cornish et al, 2010). The demographers’ work provides a contextual backdrop for the social psychologists’ case studies with the latter constituting the central focus of the paper

Quantitative study

Findings

Qualitative study

Opportunities for peer or pupil–teacher dialogue about HIV-related challenges

School interface with wider community

Discussion