Health education is the process by which people learn about their health and more specifically, how to improve their health. Health education is critically important in improving the health of communities and individuals. The health education syllabus has been design using learning outcomes which identify the knowledge, skills, attitude and values that all learners should achieve and demonstrate by the end of year 9.
Learning health education in secondary school attempts to increase knowledge on the subject in primary year level. An increase in knowledge on the subject leads to a change in attitudes about healthy and unhealthy behaviors. This change in attitude ideally leads to a change in behaviors from unhealthy to healthy, leading to an improvement in health, which is the ultimate goal of health education. Learning health is important in that it will help learners to gain the knowledge, understanding and values which will lead to positive health behaviours and practices.
Learning Health will help learners to develop the appropriate attitudes and skills to enable them to handle health and social issues in their everyday lives. The syllabus also emphaises learners to practice skill building exercises and hands on activities that allow learners to observe, demonstrate and actively practice skills to deal with and manage very day health challenges.
Health education curriculum encompasses not only the information on what behaviors are healthy, but also how to achieve those behaviors with skills development and can sometimes include motivation to change. For example, in addition to knowing what foods are healthy, know how to prepare those foods, and easy ways to incorporate them into their diet. All these aspects together are more likely to result in behavior changes that lead to improved health.
The Health education curriculum has been organized into learning strands. The five strands in health education are: Personal health, growth and development, Food and Nutrition for health, Personal Body Care and Safety, Healthy Communities and environment, and Diseases and Drug Education. These strands provides the broad learning contexts and are further subdivided into sub-strands as unit and topics in the Secondary Health education curriculum.