School health, nutrition and school performance in rural Cameroon

Abstract

Health and nutrition are the fundamental elements which impact on the schooling process of children irrespective of their level of education. These are non-negligible aspects that affect the performance of school going children. Recent developments in the effort to enhance the education for all initiative have been emphasizing on improved health and the nutrition status of pupils in order to better school performance. Given that human environment influences the health of individuals and communities in terms of their performance, discussions on nutrition and health are worthy of provoking debates involving several aspects of the political, social, economic and cultural developments of societies because the progress of a community depends on the health of its members. This is because health conditions of individuals affect their performance and output which have long run implications on the well being of the community as a whole. Societies that guarantee good health and nutrition for their citizens can boast of higher output including high performance in school. It is in this perspective that we carried out a study on school health, nutrition and school performance in rural Cameroon. Cameroon is divided into ten administrative regions with two of them speaking the English language while the rest speak French. Our study was carried in four of these ten regions. The choice of these localities was done from the assumption school distribution in the country is according to the different agro ecological zones which are: the Sudano-Sahelian region – (Adamawa, North and far north); equatorial forest region (Centre, South and East); the Savanna region (West and Northwest regions) and the coastal region (Littoral and Southwest). The different sites were selected from the four zones as follows: the Far North, the South, the Southwest and Northwest regions. In each of these localities, 180 teachers were interviewed in 30 schools from each while for each of the schools, 210 pupils in the final classes were interviewed. The category of schools which were considered from the rural areas were: lay private, mission schools and state owned schools. Two types of research tools were administered to the study population as follows: questionnaires for both teachers and parents while interviews through interview guides were administered to pupils of the senior primary classes (five and six). Data was obtained equally from parents and other key informants from government ministries and none governmental organisations through focus group discussion guides. We also carried out some observations in the different schools which enable us to see the different health and nutrition facilities available in these schools. Therefore, the data collection for this study was both quantitative and qualitative by the use of the aforementioned tools.

Keywords: Nutrition, health, school, performance, pupils, Cameroon.