Teachers’ Perceptions on their Readiness to Teach HIV/AIDS Education in Schools in Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa

Abstract

South Africa is the highest HIV prevalence country in the world with young people (15-24 years) making up the largest proportion of HIV infected people.
Kwazulu-Natal is the worst affected province nationally. Poor teacher training and the stigma around HIV/AIDS are contributing factors. Therefore an effective school-based HIV/AIDS education intervention program should encompass effective teacher training and curriculum development. A cross-sectional study
was conducted among teachers to identify the factors that support or hinder their role in HIV/AIDS education. A self-administered questionnaire was used for interviewing teachers from stratified randomly-selected 2 primary and 2 secondary schools in the province of KwaZulu-Natal’s Pietermaritzburg region.
Teachers from 2 out of the 4 selected schools were trained under an HIV/AIDS education intervention program funded by Community Care Project while those from the other 2 selected schools were not trained. This was meant to compare (using tables and graphs) the teachers’ perceptions, ability, skills, and their participation in HIV/AIDS education between the trained and untrained teachers. While about 56% of the untrained teachers never taught about HIV, it was only 5% of the trained teachers who never taught about HIV. While 97% (95% CI 93.85–100) of the trained teachers use interactive teaching methods, it was only 41% (95% CI 28.21-53.99) on the untrained teachers. Higher number of untrained teachers (70%) reported facing difficulty while talking about HIV issues compared to the trained teachers (9%). So trained teachers were more likely to participate, less likely to face difficulties, and more likely to use interactive teaching methods in HIV/AIDS classes compared to the untrained teachers. Inadequate time allocation to HIV/AIDS classes was found to be a barrier to HIV/AIDS education. This suggests the need to provide teachers with more support in terms of training and logistics.