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The SAIDE Newsletter (Vol 14 No 6) circulated in November 2008,
carried a SAIDE research paper entitled Enhancing School
Leadership: Meeting the Challenges of HIV and AIDS (Marneweck
et al: 2008). This paper being one of the key outputs of two years
of research that focused on school management in the environment
of HIV and AIDS. A project funded by the Embassy of the Kingdom
of the Netherlands.
The research that informed the
attached paper written by Jane Castle and Maryla Bialobrzeska
focused on identifying some school-based interventions that help
to mitigate the negative impact of HIV and AIDS on orphans and vulnerable
learners (OVCs) and that make a difference to the lives of vulnerable
children by enabling them to participate more fully in the education
system.
During the research we came across numerous ad hoc interventions,
many of which were implemented on the initiative of individual teachers
committed to trying to alleviate some of the suffering that OVCs
experience. These ranged from individual teachers bringing food
for learners, through teachers who undertook home visits, to teachers
for fostered orphan learners. While not intending to diminish the
impact of these interventions, the focus of this investigation was
to seek out examples of interventions that could be systematized
in their implementation and that would hopefully make a difference
on a larger scale. Overall, the findings were that an effective
school-based nutrition programme, school-based aftercare and psycho-socio
support in the form of counselling were all interventions that went
a long way to offering the kind of support that enabled learners
to participate in the education system instead of dropping out.
To successfully implement these kinds of interventions, it became
apparent that the principal and the school management team (SMT)
need to be adept at identifying and harnessing the resources –
human and material - that can best assist them in setting up and
running these kinds of programmes. Doing this successfully implies
having a range of skills such as communication skills, fundraising
skills and networking skills. Some of these skills may be innate
and integral to individual personality types of particular school
leaders and teachers. Some schools may consciously operate from
a value–base of pastoral care, however, there are also many
schools that need to be supported to make the paradigm shift that
is necessary if schools are to be conceptualized as centres of care
and support. Equally a lot of support is needed to build the required
capacity to make caring schools a reality. To this end SAIDE is
currently engaged in developing a Toolkit for school managers which
it is hoped will assist SMTs to think about, systematically plan
and implement the three key interventions discussed in the research
paper.
As an intermediate step, starting with the report on school–based
nutrition programmes, we have decided to publish the synthesis reports
that set out the findings of each of the research focus areas. The
reports on aftercare and counselling will follow in forthcoming
editions of the SAIDE newsletter. The notion of setting up and using
networks of support as a method for implementing these interventions
will also be explored.
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