By: Robert Jenkins, Director of Education and Adolescent Development – UNICEF, Victor Aguayo, Director, Nutrition and Child Development – UNICEF, Stefania Giannini, Assistant Director-General for Education – UNESCO, Lynnette Neufeld, Director of the Food and Nutrition Division – FAO, Carmen Burbano, Director School-based Programmes -WFP, Dr Rüdiger Krech,Director, Health Promotion Department – WHO
Looking after the health and well-being of learners through multi-sectoral approaches, is one of the most transformative and cost-effective ways to improve education outcomes and make education systems more inclusive and equitable.
What is an integrated approach to school health and nutrition? Schools are a key setting for delivering essential health and nutrition interventions and fostering an enabling environment for improving the health, nutrition, and overall well-being of school-age children and adolescents.
This requires an integrated approach that engages the whole education system and other sectors to develop and implement school-based policies, programmes and actions that: support equity and social inclusion in education; and ensure that school environments are free from violence and conducive to good health, nutrition, development and learning. This can include access to safe water and sanitation, a skills-based curriculum on health and nutrition and provides critical school-based health and nutrition services such as vaccination, oral health promotion, vision screening and treatment, malaria control, nutritious and safe school meals, healthy food environments in schools, sexual and reproductive health services, menstrual hygiene management, psychosocial support and mental health services, and micronutrient supplementation and deworming to prevent anemia.
School health and nutrition programmes deliver considerable education outcomes, according to a summary report produced by UNESCO, UNICEF, WFP, WHO, FAO, GPE, and The World Bank, with support from the Research Consortium for School Health and Nutrition and the UN Nutrition Secretariat, “Ready to learn and thrive: School health and nutrition around the world”. This includes a 62% reduction in absenteeism through malaria prevention interventions, 9% increase in enrolment rates when introducing school meals, a 21–61% reduction in absenteeism in low-income countries when promoting handwashing, and 50% less school skipping by tackling school violence and bullying. Almost every country in the world, 90%, already implements school health and nutrition programmes, showing that they are an effective, practical and affordable way to support learners. For example, more than 100 countries have school vaccination programmes, one in two children in primary school receive school meals and almost every country includes education for health and well-being in its curriculum.
Healthy and well-nourished school children learn better. Ensuring that girls and boys stay in school and are able and ready to learn allows countries to develop their human capital and for an individual to fully achieve their potential in life. Investing in school-based health and nutrition interventions contribute to a well-nourished, healthy and educated population, and ultimately to long-term growth, and sustainable and inclusive development.
The need is bigger today than ever as children and adolescents face unprecedented challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic deepened the learning crisis and hampered children and adolescents’ access to critical health and nutrition services provided at school. And now, the unfolding global fuel and food price crisis is pushing millions of children into hunger and poverty around the world, further threatening their education. This offers a good opportunity to re-think education systems so that health and nutrition, and overall well-being are recognized as an integral part of education policies, strategies, and programmes.
Growing recognition of the central role of education in society and the contribution of various sectors of the government to multi-sectoral initiatives such as ‘Making Every School a Health Promoting School‘ and the School Meals Coalition provide a unique opportunity to address the issues of education, health and nutrition across government, and from a systems perspective.
As schools have reopened, it is critical to restore and scale school health and nutrition programmes to ensure the health, wellbeing and success of all learners – giving them the opportunity to not only survive, but thrive in the schooling environment and beyond.
Taking action on school health and nutrition
Realising the transformative potential of an integrated approach to school health and nutrition will require governments, education partners, and communities, to put the health and well-being of learners at the core of the education agenda. We must shift the paradigm from which schools are viewed as spaces for promoting academic outcomes alone, and holistically address the needs of learners through successful scalable school-based interventions.
Only with strong country leadership, matched with adequate investment, can comprehensive school health and nutrition programmes be scaled and reach the most vulnerable and marginalized learners. Implementing and sustaining comprehensive, quality school health and nutrition programmes calls for commitment, supportive national policies, innovative approaches to financing, and coordinated efforts across sectors.
School health and nutrition policies and programmes must be relevant and responsive to country contexts and evolving needs. Countries will need to review and continue adapting policy and programme design periodically to ensure that they meet the needs of school-age children and adolescents and respond to new evidence and emerging challenges, such as the impact of climate change.
The Transforming Education Summit provides an opportunity to engage and encourage government, education, and health stakeholders to commit to a systemwide approach to promote the health and well-being of learners. UNESCO, UNICEF, WFP, WHO and FAO encourage partners to take this opportunity to renew collective commitments to advance effective integrated school health and nutrition programmes, so that children and young people are ready to learn and thrive and can contribute meaningfully to the future of their communities and countries.
Join The Government of Morocco in partnership with UNICEF, WFP, UNESCO, WHO and FAO at the Transforming Education Summit, for an online livestream event on ‘Healthy and Educated: Investing in School Health and Nutrition to Transform Education and the Lives of Children and Young People’, 17th September from 11am ET event livestream link here
