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14: Water and sanitation in schools
Throughout Eastern Africa and elsewhere in the developing world, many national governments are adopting a policy of free Universal Primary Education (UPE) in recognition of the importance of an educated population to support local poverty reduction efforts. As a consequence, the number of students who are now attending primary schools has increased dramatically. Efforts to support the implementation of UPE policies normally focus on areas such as training and hiring more teachers, building new schools and classrooms, and purchasing textbooks and other teaching materials. Unfortunately, less consideration is paid to the important contribution of clean and healthy school conditions towards better educational achievements.
Schools are where girls and boys spend a good part of their day. When a school does not have proper water or sanitation facilities, they can actually be a place that causes sickness for both students and teachers. A dirty and unhygienic school environment will discourage students from attending their classes, and the best teachers will be less willing to work and stay at a school that does not have proper water and sanitation facilities. This prevents children from getting an education that could help their families and communities to escape from poverty.
Drinking dirty water also makes many children too sick to attend school. It is estimate that each year more than 2 million children die from diarrhoeal diseases because of dirty water and poor sanitation conditions. Hundreds of million of school-aged children suffer from water- and sanitation-related diseases such as skin and eye infections, diarrhoeal diseases, and intestinal parasites which contribute to malnutrition and often hamper both physical and mental development making learning even more difficult.
In addition to ensuring that schools have proper access to clean water, so too must they have access to proper sanitation facilities. If facilities are inadequate or poorly maintained, children may prefer to defecate in the bush – a major health hazard to both the school and wider community, especially during the rainy season.
Water and sanitation in schools also have important gender aspects; the absence or inadequacy of these basic services is a major disincentive for many girls to attend school.
While having proper water supply and sanitation facilities in schools is important – it must be accompanied by hygiene education activities otherwise the full health benefits of developed facilities will not be realized. Hygiene education can be taught in a number of creative ways such as dramas, songs, etc. (the formation of student health clubs can help support such efforts).
Schools are ideal places to promote good hygiene practices among children (e.g. hand washing with soap and water – this simple act alone can significantly reduce the occurrence of diarrhoea a major killer of young children in the developing world). Moreover, it has been shown that children bring this new knowledge home and help influence the hygiene practices of their parents and other family members.