A Descriptive Study to Assess the Knowledge of School Teachers Regarding School Health Programme in Selected Rural Schools of Waghodia

Introduction: Education is the backbone of development and in order to be really fit for school, children need to be healthy. Those who suffer from health cannot concentrate or actively participate in school. Healthy children, on the other hand, attend school more regularly and can benefit fully from what the education system has to offer. Hence, School health programmes have the greater potential to link resources for education, health, nutrition and sanitation for school teachers and children at school. Material and methods: A descriptive research design was conducted to assess the knowledge regarding school health programme among 60 school teachers of selected Rural Primary and secondary schools of Waghodia by purposive sampling technique. Self structured knowledge questionnaire was used to assess the knowledge. Descriptive analysis was done by using Excel and SPSS 20. Results: More than half of 36 (60%) school teachers had poor knowledge regarding school health programme and 24 (40%) of school teachers had average but none of them were in the level of very poor and good knowledge. In relation to area-wise of school health programme shows that over-all mean percentage of the knowledge scores was 44.43% with mean and SD (13.33±2.297). The current study reveals that there was no significant association between mean knowledge score and age, gender, qualification, religion, marital status, family type, working area and experience of school teachers, P>0.05. Conclusion: School teachers had an average knowledge on school health programme which implies greater effort to be made by improving their awareness towards the various school health programmes periodically. Moreover, the teachers experience may affect the understanding the health programmes.