Education and HIV/AIDS: Ensuring Education Access for Orphans and Vulnerable Children

This training module seeks to highlight the magnitude of the crisis of orphans and vulnerable children (OVC), largely resulting from the spread of HIV/AIDS. It also describes some interventions that have been implemented in developing countries to improve these children's access to education. It was developed based on a review of current literature on OVC and their access to basic education, and a series of interviews and discussions with people who have field experience with orphans, access to education, subsidies, and social fund issues.

This module was designed for the training of key stakeholders within the education sectors of World Bank client countries, non-governmental organisations, and church-based groups involved with interventions to benefit AIDS orphans and vulnerable children. The training seeks to be as practical as possible while using a participatory and structured experiential approach.

The goals of the training module are:

• Provide the authorities of the Ministry of Education and partners with knowledge of the magnitude of the OVC crisis in sub-Saharan Africa;
• Increase the awareness of the authorities of the Ministry of Education and other partners in client countries in sub-Saharan Africa about OVC and their access to basic education in sub-regional workshops;
• Explain the complex relationship between OVC and enrollment, attendance, and performance/achievement in school;
• Train the Ministry of Education authorities and partners in sub-regional workshops to address the issues of OVC and their access to basic education;
• Assist the key stakeholders and their partners in client countries to plan and organise national workshops to develop national plans of action for the education sector to respond to HIV/AIDS;
• Share with and learn from one another information on important policy issues that are of importance to any assistance to increase access to education for OVC.

This module is divided into five sections with corresponding workshop exercises at the end of each section.

Section 1 - Who is an Orphan, who is a Vulnerable Child, and How Many Are There?
This section presents the different definitions of orphans and vulnerable children that exist in the literature reviewed. It also explores the reasons the estimates of the numbers of children orphaned by AIDS differ, based on the different definitions.

Section 2 - The Impact of Parents' HIV/AIDS-Related Illness and Death on Their Children’s Home Life
This section presents an overview of the impact of parents' HIV/AIDS-related illness and death on their children’s home life. In cases of illness and death in a household, the families are made poorer, adding to the already large group of poor people in the developing countries.

Section 3 - The Impact of Parents' HIV/AIDS-Related Illness and Death on Their Children’s Schooling
This section discusses the factors that influence access to education and surveys the impact of parents' HIV/AIDS-related illness and death on their children's enrolment, attendance, and performance at school. HIV/AIDS-related illness and death have negative impacts on enrolment, which varies from country to country and from age to age. Illness of parents affected children's attendance and performance; the impact of parents' death on their children's performance is not very clear.

Section 4 - What Has Been Done to Improve OVC Access to Education?
This section discusses the four main groups of interventions that have been undertaken in various countries with the aim of improving access to education for OVC. These interventions can be grouped into two main categories: interventions that are specific to orphans and interventions for the general population that also benefit the orphans. The section includes case histories for Burundi and Zimbabwe.

Section 5 - Key Emerging Issues and the Way Forward
This final section of the module presents emerging key issues: the definition of AIDS orphans, the increasing numbers of school-age OVC, and the relationship between orphanhood and enrolment, attendance, and performance. The section points to what still needs to be done and stresses the short-term nature of most of the interventions undertaken so far. The long-term solution to improving access to education for OVC, is achieving the goal of providing Education for All.

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