Policy Instructional Time
8.1.4 Policy - Instructional Time
The education respondents were asked if they stipulated time and/or grade levels for instruction about HIV, STD and sexuality.
Figure 17 below shows that about one-half (45.5%) of the education ministries do not stipulate nor recommend time allocations for instruction on sexuality
(MOE - 10). About one-fifth (18.2%) of education ministries stipulated a minimum time and about one-third (36.4%) said that they stipulated or recommended time at specific grade levels. Of the education ministries that did recommend or stipulate a time, they recommended an average of 8.3 hours per year.Figure 17
1. Principals were not able to report accurately on time spent in sexuality
education teaching.
2. The average time per year spent teaching about HIV/AIDS was 2.8 hours. Up to another 2
to 5 hours was spent on sexuality education.
When asked about stipulating minimum times for sexuality education, only 2.8% of school districts reported that they recommend or stipulate a minimum time for sexuality instruction. 62.9% of school district respondents said that they followed ministry guidelines
(SD - 12) But only 54.6% of education ministries set out a minimum time for sexuality education. Consequently, very few school districts set out how much time should be spent on sexuality education by their schools.When school principals were asked to describe the amount of time that their students received in sexuality instruction, the answers varied considerably. Moreover, school principals were often unable to estimate how much time was allocated to sexuality education. It was also impossible for most school principals to estimate the breakdown among HIV, STD and overall sexuality content in the curricula or instructional program.
Teachers reported
(T-I-8) that they taught 2.8 hours per year on their AIDS unit. An additional time of between three and five hours was reported for sexuality education between grades 7 and 11. (T-I-9)