Go Back     Discussing sexual issues and seeking advice

One of the explicit aims of the Sapler programme is to encourage greater openness about sexual matters among learners, and a number of questions addressed this issue. Disappointingly, learners from Sapler schools did not show better results on most of these questions.

Most learners (67% from Sapler schools and 74% from other schools) realised that one is under an obligation to communicate one’s HIV positive status. However, the question was unfortunately somewhat vaguely phrased and did not make it clear that this applied to potential or actual sexual partners rather than to people in general.

A similar question relating to having an STD was more specific and here roughly the same percentage of learners from Sapler (86%) and other (87%) schools gave the correct answer.

Learners were even more unequivocal that one should inform the clinic if one has an STD, with 93% of learners from Sapler schools and 92% of learners from other schools endorsing this.

Another question related to willingness to be open about sexual matters with older people and again most learners endorsed this, but somewhat fewer from Sapler (81%) than from other (88%) schools.

A series of questions related directly to the perceived quality of advice learners received from a range of different sources. A similar pattern emerged for Sapler and other schools, with family, clinics and church ministers being seen as extremely good sources of advice, closely followed by radio and TV programmes, and with friends, traditional healers and initiation school a long way behind.

Interestingly, the encouragement to engage in peer discussion that learners at Sapler schools have received appear not to have dulled their critical faculties, with a larger proportion of Sapler learners than other learners (34% vs 31%) saying they have received bad advice from friends.