The World Education Forum 2015 in Korea is aiming to galvanize the education community around a common vision for Education 2030.

Education 2030 is looking to build on the successes of Education for All movement but also to address its short-fallings by focusing on inclusion and equity, giving everyone an equal opportunity in education and leaving no one behind. It is seeking to strengthen and increase efforts to reach those marginalised by gender inequality, poverty, conflict and disaster and disability.

Key to this effort is making sure that children are healthy enough to learn and learn enough to be healthy. This perhaps best illustrated by the fact it is estimated that 200 to 500 million school days are lost to ill health every year in low income countries and many of those lost days due to preventable conditions like malaria,  worm infections , malnutrition and anaemia.

An approach which is vital to achieving healthy children, and has already been widely adopted, is the Focusing Resources in Effective School Health (FRESH) framework. FRESH facilitates the development of effective and sustainable school health and nutrition policies, programmes and practices.

As highlighted by FRESH – School Health Matters Beyond 2015, a new paper which will be launched by FRESH partners at this year’s Forum, although much has been achieved since 2000 there is much more to be done for sustainable, inclusive and equitable access to quality education and school health programmes.

Click  image to download paper

To achieve this requires strong government leadership, an integrated approach and continued coordinated support by partners.

For Education 2030 to meet its objectives the paper outlines three key steps going forward:

  • A concern for health needs to be part of a broad view of the purposes of education that recognizes that the whole child, not just their intellect, is fundamental to their learning.
  • Students need to learn the skills, knowledge, norms, attitudes and coping mechanisms that are essential to their success at school and in life.
  • School health needs to be mainstreamed in budgeted education sector plans.

The FRESH paper was produced by the FRESH partnership which includes Partnership for Child Development, World Bank, WFP, UNESCO, UNICEF, UNODC,  Save the Children, AIR, Education International, Japan Consortium for Global School Health Research,  International school Health Network,

Follow the FRESH @ WEF debate on twitter with #FRESH and #WEF2015 on @schoolshealth