The recent February 2nd, 2021 open web meeting of the FRESH Partnership discussed why UN agencies had apparently dropped Health & Life Skills (H&LS) education from the list of core subjects they are monitoring as part of Target 4.7 of Goal #4 (Education). (You can access the recording and documents on the FRESH webinars page). One of the reasons why this important gap in UN monitoring has occurred is our collective failure to advocate strongly and clearly for including health & life skills as an important subject. Instead, most advocacy, research and program development is focused on many, many specific topics such as nutrition, drugs, bullying or HIV/AIDS rather than a core curriculum. (Thereby frightening decision-makers and educators away from monitoring it as a core curriculum.)We have not defined a list of generic student outcomes and we have not defined clearly how much instructional time is needed since 1985. Although it is one of the core components of the FRESH and other multi-component approaches, no global agency, donor or research group reports regularly on the status of H&LS curricula in countries. (This lack of data will be addressed in an upcoming fact-finding survey and curriculum/policy analysis.)
Two recent reports illustrate how we, collectively, have not been clear about what we want. Is it Health and Life Skills education? Or is it Health education alone? Or is it Life Skills education alone? Greater clarity is urgently needed if we are to make a stronger case. And there are different networks and sectors making the case separately for one or the other. Our cause has suffered by the competition among topics as the focus. We cannot allow for similar confusion between health and life skills.
The school health program of the Centers for Disease Control has just published a report on how health education and other school nutrition components on (nutrition) can support social & emotional learning (SEL) which is a large part of life skills education. The student learning outcomes being emphasized are items such as self awareness, self-management and other skills. Nutrition or other health topics are the vehicle for learning these life skills. Almost at the same time, the school health program of the World Health Organization published a School Handbook on Life Skills education. In the WHO guide, the student learning outcomes are focused on preventing NCDs, with nutrition knowledge, skills & attitudes being a risk or protective factor for NCDs.
The answer to the potential confusion in terminology is quite simple. We need a core curriculum that teaches both health and life skills. The life skills are not just skills, They are better understood to include social and emotional outcomes such as forming healthy relationships and being included in supportive families, peer groups and at school. We need to find ways to measure and monitor such skills. We also need better and more specific descriptions of the functional health literacy needed in health within different contxts and on different topics (Note: HL includes safety & security topics)
Once we combine Health and Life Skills (H&LS), we need to add a third component, which a FRESH Working Group has called Social Inclusion. This is where students learn universal values such as caring for others, relationships, diversity, character, ethics, social and environmental responsibility. Many countries call this Personal, Social & Health (PSH) education.
Then we need to construct models of core H&LS or PSH curricula with well-planned scope and sequencing of generic skills, essential knowledge and universal values. If we start using coherent and clearly stated terms and concepts, we might have a better chance of being understood by decision-makers and policymakers.
Two recent reports illustrate how we, collectively, have not been clear about what we want. Is it Health and Life Skills education? Or is it Health education alone? Or is it Life Skills education alone? Greater clarity is urgently needed if we are to make a stronger case. And there are different networks and sectors making the case separately for one or the other. Our cause has suffered by the competition among topics as the focus. We cannot allow for similar confusion between health and life skills.
The school health program of the Centers for Disease Control has just published a report on how health education and other school nutrition components on (nutrition) can support social & emotional learning (SEL) which is a large part of life skills education. The student learning outcomes being emphasized are items such as self awareness, self-management and other skills. Nutrition or other health topics are the vehicle for learning these life skills. Almost at the same time, the school health program of the World Health Organization published a School Handbook on Life Skills education. In the WHO guide, the student learning outcomes are focused on preventing NCDs, with nutrition knowledge, skills & attitudes being a risk or protective factor for NCDs.
The answer to the potential confusion in terminology is quite simple. We need a core curriculum that teaches both health and life skills. The life skills are not just skills, They are better understood to include social and emotional outcomes such as forming healthy relationships and being included in supportive families, peer groups and at school. We need to find ways to measure and monitor such skills. We also need better and more specific descriptions of the functional health literacy needed in health within different contxts and on different topics (Note: HL includes safety & security topics)
Once we combine Health and Life Skills (H&LS), we need to add a third component, which a FRESH Working Group has called Social Inclusion. This is where students learn universal values such as caring for others, relationships, diversity, character, ethics, social and environmental responsibility. Many countries call this Personal, Social & Health (PSH) education.
Then we need to construct models of core H&LS or PSH curricula with well-planned scope and sequencing of generic skills, essential knowledge and universal values. If we start using coherent and clearly stated terms and concepts, we might have a better chance of being understood by decision-makers and policymakers.
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