Health science education in primary schools: evaluation of procedures and results

Health education is an important component of school education, one that can be defended by an analysis of what the aims of education should be. Yet it is often undervalued by schools and suffers in competition with other subjects. Teaching health education well makes many demands on a teacher, and these differ for primary and secondary teachers. This paper examines the place of health education in the primary curriculum and discusses what is meant by good health and how a school might structure its curriculum and pedagogy to enhance the health of it students. It is important to evaluate health education interventions. I discuss the place of evaluation of procedures and of results and of formative and summative evaluation. The benefits of evaluation are stressed, along with action research and long-term studies