August 2001 Insights Gender Violence Special Issue

Risky behaviour: can education help?

Transactional sex between young girls and older men is common place in Malawi and in most cases sexual misconduct among teachers goes unpunished.

Survey findings from Malawi, part of a three-country study based at the University of Sussex, which includes Botswana and Uganda, show that:

• Students are indulging in risky sexual behaviour, involving multiple partners for example, despite being generally well informed about how HIV is transmitted.
• Contributory factors to risky behaviour include poverty, fatalism - we have to die sometime - desire to experiment, easy money, and lack of will power.
• Widespread confusion as to whether or not condoms are effective exists.
• AIDS education is ineffectively taught and has failed to bring about substantive changes in sexual behaviour.
• Due to lack of training and cultural taboos, many teachers are too embarrassed to teach the AIDS components of the curriculum.
• Only a small percentage of teachers in the survey consider that sexual harassment of students by teachers is 'a big problem' in their school.

Five key aspects of life skills: Communication, interpersonal relationships Decision making, problem solving Self awareness, self esteem, empathy Creative and critical thinking Coping with emotions and stress

What can be done to help break this culture of silence and change the behaviour of both learners and teachers? Policy implications include the need to:

• develop peer education and drama techniques to open up discussion of AIDS issues between students, school staff and the local community
• develop links between community and schools through existing structures such as Parent Teacher Associations using social mobilisation techniques to help change attitudes towards girls' schooling
• provide access to non-formal education and income generating projects for out-of-school youth and dropouts (many of them orphans)
• include effective life skills classes throughout primary and secondary schooling, at present only operating in Standard 4
• promote greater use of child-centred teaching methods especially in relation to AIDS and health subjects
• provide teachers and management with practical training on how best to communicate with and teach pupils about the importance of safe sex
• conduct further research into adolescent sexual behaviour and sexual harassment.