The Positive Impact of Reproductive Health and HIV and AIDS Education in Primary and Secondary Schools in Indonesia

This paper is based from the 2011 Indonesian Gender and Reproductive Health Survey of Year 6 and Year 12 students, teachers and school principals (N=8972). The aim is to evaluate students’ understanding on reproductive health knowledge and HIV and AIDS. In Indonesia reproductive health education is taught and included in school, though the content is not comprehensive. Subjects that have teaching materials on reproductive health and HIV and AIDS include Biology, Science, Sport and Healthy Living (PENJASKES) and to some extend Social Sciences and Islamic teaching. Our bivariate and logistic regression analysis demonstrates that Year 6 and Year 12 students and their teachers have a relatively high degree of knowledge about reproductive health matters and HIV and AIDS. However there is substantial variation by type of school and geographic location. This surprisingly good result provides an opportunity for the Ministry of Education and Culture in collaboration with the Ministry of Health to strengthen its reproductive health education curriculum, and to provide more training for teachers so that reproductive health education can be integrated in related subjects and can be taught more accurately and enthusiastically.