Collaboration amongst role players of HIV and AIDS education in public primary schools

M.Cur.HIV and AIDS education as a prevention strategy is priority number one in the National Strategic Plan for South Africa. Prevention of illnesses is also an integral part of primary health care (Department of Health, 2007: 10). There are different role players offering age-appropriate HIV and AIDS education to primary school learners, such as educators (within the Life Orientation programme), school health nurses (as part of health promotion) and non-governmental organisation (NGO) peer educators who visit schools per invitation or as part of their programme. Knowledge of collaboration amongst different role payers is necessary in order to pool the complementary strengths and maximise the positive impact of education on adolescents’ sexual behaviour. The design used in this research is quantitative and descriptive in nature. The respondents were clustered according to categories, namely school health nurses, primary school educators and NGO peer educators. As school health nurses (n=8) and peer educators (n=15) constituted a small population, they were all included in the study. Systematic random sampling was used to select respondents from the population of educators (N=75: n=42). A developed questionnaire was distributed to the consenting respondents who met the inclusion criteria. A checklist was also developed to review policies and guidelines used as a framework for providing HIV and AIDS education to learners by role players. A pilot study was conducted. The Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS14.0) for Windows was used to analyse the data