UNESCO and the World Health Organization (WHO) today, Tuesday, June 22, 2021 launched the Global Standards for Health-promoting Schools, a resource package for schools to improve the health and well-being of 1.9 billion school-aged children and adolescents.
The resource package aims to ensure all schools promote life skills, cognitive and socio-emotional skills and healthy lifestyles for all learners. The global partners indicated that they will pilot these global standards in Botswana, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya and Paraguay.
The initiative forms part of WHO’s 13th General Program of Work target of ‘1 billion lives made healthier’ by 2023. It is also in line with UNESCO’s global Education 2030 Agenda.
“Schools play a vital role in the well-being of students, families and their communities; the link between education and health has never been more evident. These newly launched global standards are designed to create schools that nurture education and health, and that equip students with the knowledge and skills for their future health and well-being, employability and life prospects”.
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General
Education and Health
Also, UNESCO Director General, Audrey Azouley highlighted the interplay between education and health.
“Education and health are interdependent basic human rights for all, at the core of any human right, and essential to social and economic development. A school that is not health-promoting is no longer justifiable and acceptable. I call for all of us to affirm our commitment and role, to make every school a health-promoting school” .
UNESCO Director General, Audrey Azouley
The global standards provide a resource for education systems to help foster health and well-being through stronger governance. Meanwhile, UNESCO and WHO have pledged to work with governments to enable countries to adapt the package to their specific contexts.
“The evidence is clear. Comprehensive school health and nutrition programmes in schools have significant impacts among school-aged children”.
In the joint statement, UNESCO and WHO highlighted the impacts of proper nutrition on school children. According to the statement, school health and nutrition interventions for girls and boys in low-income areas where worms and anaemia are prevalent can lead to 2.5 years of additional schooling.
Other benefits of the package
Also, Malaria prevention interventions can result in a 62% reduction in absenteeism. Additionally, nutritious school meals increase enrolment rates by 9% on average, and attendance by 8%. Also, such meals can reduce anaemia in adolescent girls by up to 20%.
Furthermore, the statement stated that Hand-washing promotion reduces absenteeism due to gastrointestinal and respiratory illnesses by 21% -61% in low-income countries. Likewise, free screening and eyeglasses have led to a 5% higher probability of students passing standardized tests in reading and math.
The closure of many schools around the world during the COVID-19 pandemic has caused severe disruptions to education. An estimated 365 million primary school students went without school meals. This significantly increased rates of stress, anxiety and other mental health issues.
The Health Promoting Schools approach was first articulated by WHO, UNESCO and UNICEF in 1995 and adopted in over 90 countries and territories. However, few countries have implemented it at scale, and even fewer have effectively adapted their education systems to include health promotion. The new global standards will help countries to integrate health promotion into all schools and boost the health and well-being of their children.
