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This Section: Integrating H & S Programs Within Education

Education as Lead Partner

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This summary was first posted in June 2015. Currently it has been posted as  a "first edition" version. The following individuals or organizations have contributed to the development of this topic. ASCD, Education International, Peter Paulus, Marthe Deschenes, Doug McCall. We encourage readers to submit comments or suggested edits by posting a comment on the Mini-blog & Discussion Page on Integrating Health & Social Programs Within Education Systems for this section or posting a comment below:
This summary addresses the need for the education sector to be the primary or lead partner in inter-sectoral, inter-ministry and inter-agency partnerships in order that equity, inclusion, health, safety & personal/social development programs can be integrated more effectively within school systems.
Recent experience is suggesting that there are different ways to achieve this goal of having the education sector as lead actor. These include structural, staffing and data-based strategies.
New Structural Approaches/Alternatives
In structure-based strategies, the role of the health and other sectors can be changed to one of acting as facilitators, not selecting issues to be addressed or priorities but enabling the education sector to do make those decisions. This entails letting the education sector choose the equity, health, safety and social issues that are of more concern to them and their students, with the other sectors providing data and research to assist them in making those choices. This enables encourages the education sector, to be more purposeful and accountable in addressing these problems. An alternative structural approach is to assign the lead to the education sector by legislation and regulations that require schools to promote health and well-being. A third structural model is to truly implement and maintain a "whole of government" strategy wherein a central agency or team within government is able to truly coordinate and facilitate work across ministries that will promote the health, development and learning of the whole child.
  • Model One: The role of the health or other sectors and aid/relief donor organizations can be transformed to a facilitating rather than directing one that has traditionally included selecting problems/behaviours as priorities. This model can provide more data to national/state and local education authorities to assess their health/social needs from surveys (of students & policies/programs) with local data sets so that educators can select the health issues of most concern to them. This model would also require new methods for accountability and reporting on progress to avoid having only a series of projects. Work is being done to collect examples of this facilitating approach but we can already point to the work being done in Quebec (Canada) and the Netherlands.
  • Model Two: Governments and donor organizations can assign a leadership/coordinating role to education systems (ministries, school boards, schools, education professionals) as the backbone of the multi-intervention approaches. Formal changes to education legislation and regulations that explicitly assigns health and development as goals for the school system are part of this model. School systems can coordinate the various comprehensive and problem/behaviour specific strategies (healthy schools, safe schools, WASH (hygiene & sanitation), community schools, mental health, obesity etc. and develop flexible ways to report on progress. Again examples of this assignment strategy are being collected but work is already underway in jurisdictions such as Ontario, Canada and Scotland. As well, in the US, the Centers for Disease Control has asked a lead education organization, ASCD, to take a national leadership role in promoting healthy schools.
  • Model Three This model would really make the Whole of Government Inter-Ministry Approach work by investing in relationships, joint assignments, coordination, creating incentives, re-organizing budget-making and systems routines/procedures to ensure cooperation. A whole child, whole school approach would need to be built into the process so that no particular urgent issue high jacks the process and inter-ministry cooperation. Manitoba, Canada has successfully implemented and maintained this strategy through its Healthy Child Manitoba inter-ministry agency.
Staffing-based Strategies
In staffing-based strategies, the education sector can be enabled to assume leadership by appointing school health or development coordinators within the education ministry or agency or co-appointing coordinators with offices in both or several ministries.. As well,having the education ministry or school district chair the multi-sectorial committees or coalitions as well as internal joint planning groups within government
Education ministries, school boards and schools can also be enabled by providing additional staffing to convene and lead inter-ministry, inter-agency and inter-professional/ school committees that bring together all sectors, mandated and voluntary, wishing to work with schools.
At the same time, these education-led committees and networks can operate within broader whole of government strategies on youth development of healthy children. These government wide mechanisms need to be actively supported by the assignment of personnel to build and maintain relationships, the strategic use of incentive funding, joint planning processes and more. Informal as well as informal mechanisms to encourage cooperation should be used.
Data-Driven Strategies
Another strategy for assigning, facilitating or re-distributing leadership roles in school-based and school-linked health promotion and social development can be through more extensive use of data and survey results, thereby leading to task oriented allocations of roles and responsibilities. Appropriate indicators and realistic targets for education systems as well as the partner agencies involved in delivering school-based and school-linked programs should be developed as part of this transfer of lead authority. However, the outputs should be carefully delineated such that school programs are not expected to be accountable for changes on health or social status or even health or social behaviours other than those that can be modified and controlled by school-based or school-linked efforts.
In this new approach, non-educational ministries and agencies are supported and required to work with education systems in a way that enables education authorities and schools to identify their local needs, ascertain/adapt their participation in national or state initiatives, identify, select or develop their own local programs and processes, build in their own planned outputs and accountability measures while still being faithful to best practices identified by research or professional practice elsewhere.
This includes health/well-being surveys that have accessible and usable data sets for local planning, coordination and cooperation among ministries and research funders who support child/youth health surveys, regular meetings of health and education authorities and planner to share data sources and survey results, more support for secondary analysis and local analysis of national or state level data, technical assistance and support in joint local planning with schools and agencies, increased flexibility in categorical funding programs to adapt to local circumstances, greater intra-ministry and inter-ministry planning, more research and development of ecological approaches to systems change where policies and programs and comprehensive approaches are "grown" within school systems rather than imposed or encouraged from outside the school systems.
As part of this strategy, schools systems can be helped to develop realistic input, process and output indicators to measure progress in relation to student health/wellness learning as well as their roles in promoting child/youth health and well-being. Develop corresponding indicators for non-educational systems to use to similarly monitor and report on their progress in achieving educational outputs such as reduced student absences, school incidents such as accidents or violence and school dropouts.
At the same time, health and other sectors can be helped to develop education-related outputs for their respective systems and sectors. For example, the health sector can track the number of student absences caused by chronic diseases. Or the law enforcement sector can track the number of student suspensions due to possession of drugs in schools.
Developing local community data sets and profiles from a variety of surveys so that local agencies and school boards can share and use these data sources in joint planning is also a necessary part of this data-based strategy and new approach to inter-sectoral partnerships.
Sources:

This summary was first posted in June 2012. Currently it has been posted as  an "excerpt/adaptation", "first draft" or "revised draft" and "first or revised edition" version. The following individuals or organizations have contributed to the development of this topic.
We encourage readers to submit comments or suggested edits by posting a comment on the Mini-blog & Discussion Page for this section or posting a comment below:
Text

This summary was first posted in June 2012. Currently it has been posted as  an "excerpt/adaptation", "first draft" or "revised draft" and "first or revised edition" version. The following individuals or organizations have contributed to the development of this topic.
We encourage readers to submit comments or suggested edits by posting a comment on the Mini-blog & Discussion Page for this section or posting a comment below:
Due to the length of Handbook Sections (similar to a book chapter) prepared for this web site and knowledge exchange program, we post these documents as separate documents. Click on this web link to access the draft or completed version on this topic. Come back to this page to post any comments or suggestions. 

 Bibliography/Toolbox on
Key research, reports and resources on this topic are highlighted below.  Many of the topics in this web site also have extensive bibliographies/toolboxes (BTs) published as separate documents. Click on this web link to access the full version of our Bibliography/Toolbox on this topic. These lists use our outline for these collections that we have developed over several years of curating these materials.
Research
Reports, Resources


Understand the Approach/ Program & Its Effectiveness in Different Contexts on Different Aspects of HPSD, Populations


How to Implement, Maintain, Scale Up, Sustain, Build Capacity, Leverage to Support Core Components.


How to integrate within Education Systems

Use of Ecological/ Systems Approach



Research Questions/
KDE Agenda
Understand the Approach/ Program & Its Effectiveness in Different Contexts on Different Aspects of HPSD, Populations


How to Implement, Maintain, Scale Up, Sustain, Build Capacity, Leverage to Support Core Components.


How to integrate within Education Systems

Use of Ecological/ Systems Approach



Research Questions/
KDE Agenda
The following additional resources are posted on this web site or published by other credible sources. Please send any suggested additions to info@internationalschoolhealth.org
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Key Changes within Systems (other than Education)
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