Many countries are now introducing sex education into schools. Extensive efforts are
being made to provide information on safe practices both through sex education in
schools, through the primary health care system and through the efforts of NGO's in
circulating free educational materials. In Zimbabwe, Zambia and Botswana Action
magazine is widely available and carries health and environmental stories in comic strip
form to wide audiences (see for example Action Magazine No 8). This magazine is
supported by grants from ODA, SIDA, the Zimbabwe Trust and the Gabarone Round
Table. Redd Barna amongst others sponsors a schools HIV/AIDS education programme
which has produced over 400,000 booklets for students and teachers, a range of posters
and other learning materials, has sponsored over 60 in-service training workshops, and
has assisted in the incorporation of information on HIV into the school curriculum. An
evaluation report (Marangwanda 1991) indicates that most of these programme
objectives have been achieved. In an extensive survey of educational administrators,
parents and adolescents Dzvimbo and Schatz (1992) have traced knowledge about and
attitudes towards sex education directed partly towards HIV awareness and intended to
lead to behavioural changes. Their data illustrates how complex and varied reactions
are to the introduction of these matters into the school curriculum. Views of educational
administrators, parents and students were at variance with each other and within the
groups there were differences associated with different types of school mission, district
authority etc. Wilson, Greenspan and Wilson (1989) illustrate that despite campaigns to
provide information misconceptions remain prevalent amongst secondary school
students in Zimbabwe. More than 40% of their sample believed that most people with
AIDS in Africa were homosexual that HIV seropositive individuals look unhealthy and
that HIV can be contracted from toilet seats and mosquitoes.
In other regions, many countries are introducing HIV related content into school
curricula. To give only one example amongst many, the Community School Board in
Papua New Guinea has now agreed that sex education should now be part of upper
primary curriculum with the support of the Council of Churches who were previously
unenthusiastic. This is a result of growing concern both with population growth and
with sexually transmitted diseases (Education Now 1991:6).
A pervasive problem for educational programmes designed to promote low risk sexual
behaviour is that whilst it is relatively easy to show that informational messages are
being received, there is little firm evidence on the extent to which this alters risk
behaviours. The analytical problems are formidable, and, in such a sensitive area, data
is often inaccessible and unreliable. The analytical problems are similar to those
involved in studying other risk behaviour. Recent modelling of risk assessments related
to cigarette smoking identifies three sources of information that influence perception of
risk. First there are prior risk assessments that individuals have derived from general
attitudes and prejudices, second there are risk assessments based on direct experience
and that of significant others around them, and third there are risk assessments that are
influenced by information deliberately provided by educational and health