Life Skills Based Education (LSBE)

Background: Life Skills Based Education – Sexuality Education

Since 2003, WPF has been offering life skills education to the Pakistani youth to gain a better understanding of the changes they face in their personal growth and development, whilst at the same time empowering them with skills that build respect, self esteem, and a sense of direction and pride in their future.

The programme focuses on:

• Developing skills to protect youth from unwanted sexual and reproductive health, and social problems such as drug use; HIV & AIDS; unwanted pregnancy, abuse, and sexual violence;
• Identifying and reducing risk behaviours that may have negative consequences for their health and growth; and
• Encouraging personal responsibility for their health by developing health care skills and attitudes for protecting their health and wellbeing.

Its model follows the following approach:

Step 1: SRH & R needs assessment of young people 
Step 2: Needs based material development
Step 3: Capacity building of stakeholders (Government officials, Media, Partner NGOs)
Step 4: Implementation and execution of programme in schools by partners and M&E by WPF
Step5: Result documentation & Sharing

Because the LSBE program has been ongoing for the past four years in many districts all over Pakistan, there have been numerous opportunities to receive feedback from the teachers and students regarding the program. The curriculum was one area that people focused on when sharing comments. Although quite comprehensive and detailed, the lessons for each module varied in length, many of which took longer than the suggested time given in the lesson plan. This resulted in the program lasting more than a year in a number of schools. Teachers felt that all the information in the manual was important enough to share with students and there was a need to spend enough time on each topic in order to guarantee comprehension; thus, the lessons often lasted 45 minutes to an hour at times, as opposed to the suggested 35-45 minutes.

Students clearly enjoyed the activities and the topics that are part of the LSBE program, and teachers stated that they too enjoyed teaching the lessons. In an effort to preserve the positive aspects of the program, WPF took on the task to divide the current LSBE curriculum into 4 age-specific levels, in order to make it more standardized, i.e. like all other subjects, as well as guarantee understanding of topics and gaining the appropriate skills.

Goal:

The next phase of the LSBE program is now beginning and will last for four years. For this phase, changes have been made to the LSBE curriculum itself to enhance the effectiveness of LSBE educators and to help incorporate it into the weekly schedule more easily.

The two main goals for the next three years of LSBE are:
(1) To aid in the integration of LSBE in the national curriculum, and
(2) To create a pool of certified LSBE master trainers.

In order to do this, the LSBE curriculum must not be seen as a separate entity that needs to be adopted into the school system; rather, the objective is to make the transition of LSBE into schools a natural process. In all other subjects, students build upon their knowledge base from year to year; thus, by creating four different levels of LSBE, a continued education model has been followed where the students are essentially building upon their knowledge of life skills from one year to the next. It is hoped that this will help in the smooth transition of the LSBE program into the schools’ curriculums.

New Phase of LSBE:

Initially the LSBE curriculum was a very comprehensive collection of lessons regarding issues that adolescents experience over the span of 4-5 years, all taught in one year. Now, however, the LSBE curriculum will be a four-year program, as opposed to one. The first year will consist of establishing a solid skill base for each student. The next three years will be based on age-appropriate information and will focus on 2-3 important issues/topics that adolescents are experiencing at every age level.

The main goal of this approach is that students will learn the skills they need at the first level of LSBE. Once they have a solid understanding of the skills needed for everyday life situations, they can learn about the specific subjects that are relevant to their lives as 14 year-olds, 15 year-olds, etc. because now they will have the appropriate skills to deal with and handle any kind of situation that may arise.
 
The table below gives details of the topics that will be addressed each year of the LSBE curriculum. It is clear that each year builds upon the previous one, ensuring that the students are receiving a comprehensive understanding of LSBE.

Before students can delve into any of the content, they must be fully equipped with the appropriate skills with which to handle new information and knowledge. Once students have the skills, they can deal with any situation, as those skills can be applied to various situations and material. This is precisely why it is important to teach students the skills first, then the content through those skills.

Process:In order to support the sustainability of this project, WPF will hold LSBE trainings for master trainers. In our upcoming ToMT, we are planning on training the MTs on level 1 of the LSBE curriculum. Follow-up trainings will be held in the fourth quarter of this year to further train the MTs on the technical aspect of LSBE.

We have also produced an easy-to-use community-based monitoring tool. It is hoped that through the use of this tool the monitoring visits will decrease immensely and partners will be able to monitor the LSBE project in a less time-consuming manner.

Resource Materials:There will be a separate teacher manual for each level of the LSBE curriculum, as well as a student workbook that corresponds to each teacher manual.

Funding:WPF will provide 75% of the funding for LSBE to each implementing partner for the first year of this program (2008). For the second year, 60% of the funding will be provided. For the third year we are expecting to provide 50% of the funding, and 40% in the fourth year. This procedure will hopefully aid in the sustainability of the LSBE project within each partner organization.

Benefits:

• LSBE will be like any other subject – taught in levels of increasing knowledge so that each year the students will build upon what they learned the previous year.
• A group of students who will have focused information about LSBE and can become peer educators in the future
• This group can naturally grow into YAN and be leaders in their communities
• Less workload for the teachers, as they will be working on LSBE for about 3 months a year
• Teachers can be specialized: some will teach the level 1 topics, some will be teaching at level 2, etc.
• Continued yearly connection with the students through the continued education model
• With teachers only teaching LSBE to students for three months in the year, opportunities will open up for them to educate the community (parents, teachers, and other adults) on SRHR issues.

Possible Disadvantages:

• Chance of students leaving: 10% loss of class each year because of dropouts
• New students coming in who have not studied the curriculum – a shortened version of the most important tools can be devised for these students so that they can gain a basic understanding of the same skills/issues that their classmates have already thoroughly learned.
• Number of students learning LSBE overall may decrease, as only one class per school will begin the program this year
• Students in class 9 & 10 have long-term exams, will that interfere in any way with the teaching of LSBE?