Abstract
The Nigerian National School Health Policy (NSHPo) was adopted more than a decade ago, yet its quality of implementation (QoI) remains poor. Diverse variations exist between public and private schools yet most studies in Nigeria did not consider this in their evaluation. This study was conducted to assess the QoI of the School Health Programme (SHP) in public and private primary schools in Ibadan metropolis, using the NSHPo framework as a guide. The study utilized a comparative-descriptive cross-sectional design. A two-stage sampling technique was used to select one of five local government areas in a Metropolitan city and 68 primary schools. An observational checklist was used to assess the five domains of the SHP, namely: Healthful School Environment [HSE]; School Health Services [SHS]; Skills Based Health Education [SBHE]; School Feeding Services [SFS], and School, Home, and Community Relationship [SHCR]), as listed in the Nigerian SHPo framework. QoI was assessed by exploring availability, suitability, adequacy, and functionality of the domains measured. About half of the primary schools (38.5% public; 75.9% private) had first-aid boxes, but they were empty in 66.7% of public and 20.7% of private schools. A few (19.1%) had hand-washing facilities. Almost all the schools (97.1%) did not perform medical examination for school vendors. Only 35.3% of the schools had waste-disposal facilities, of which a significantly higher proportion were in private schools (72.4%) (P < 0.001). None of the schools had counselling schedule or record of counselling sessions. Overall, QoI of the SHP was significantly poor in 36.8% of the schools, with a higher proportion (46.2%) in public schools compared with private schools (24.1%) (p < 0.001). The School Health Programme in selected urban private and public primary schools had poor quality of implementation but private schools had a better quality of implementation.
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