PRINCIPALS in some public schools across the island have been refusing to accept students who are HIV-infected, forcing the Ministry of Education to “twist their arms” to open the doors to some of these children, many of whom are wards of the state.

Christopher Graham, national co-ordinator of the HIV/AIDS education programme in the Ministry of Education, said while the National HIV policy speaks to infected children being allowed the right to an education, principals who refused to admit them cannot be sanctioned.

“That is a policy and not an Act, and so we cannot sanction principals outside of a formal legislative framework,” Graham said.

Graham, who was addressing the Observer’s Monday Exchange meeting of reporters and editors at the newspaper’s head office in Kingston, said, however, that the ministry investigates reports of principals who deny admission to students.

“In recent times I have been slapped on the wrist for “threatening” principals but we do what we need to do to ensure the child is placed,” he said.

Graham explained that they will at times, threaten to report the matter to the national HIV programme or solicit support from the legal unit at the Ministry of Education or the Attorney’s General office.

He said the education ministry implemented a host school programme after they began receiving reports that a number of principals were turning away wards of the state who are HIV positive.

The programme, he explained, was conceptualised to assist the Mustard Seed Communities and support groups like Jamaica Network of Seropositive (JN+) who were having difficulties getting children in schools.

“Whereas they could challenge Mustard Seed and JN+ they could not challenge the Ministry of Education, which is a regulatory body responsible for the operations of all schools,” he said, adding that they went in and negotiated placement.

Pointing to a flipside, Graham said sometimes principals who admit HIV-infected students come under threat from other parents if the child’s status is discovered.

“When we place students in say the Spanish Town area parents will know because they probably live in the community where Mustard Seed is and they see the kids going in and out in their uniforms and they will raise an alarm,” he said.

Graham said the best way to deal with this is to educate entire school populations, which can be tedious since some parents do not understand why their children must be in school with HIV-infected peers.

“I always say to principals, for every one child we place here, there are three or four other infected children whose parents simply register them and you don’t know because they are not wards of the state,” Graham said.

Graham said they also must scale up prevention efforts in schools.

“We may place a male student 16 or 17 years old in a school and the girls are all over that boy in no time, not knowing the child’s status, and these are some of the challenges that we have and that is why we must scale up prevention efforts,” he said.

Graham said while there are some students who might have contracted the disease at birth, there are others who have contracted it from transgenerational and transactional sex.

“Girls in particular are having sex with older infected men for lunch money and these are some of the major issues confronting us at the Ministry of Education and we have to make sure that we formalise our response to effectively manage this,” he said.

Graham said that in an effort to address this problem, the ministry has implemented a health and family life education policy described as the flagship skill-based curriculum which focuses on the development of the whole person.

This curriculum, Graham said, creates an environment for open, honest discussion on sexuality in schools.

“What we do is teach the children skills, like refusal skills, decision-making skills and self-awareness skills,” he said, adding that a lot of students seem to know about HIV but are having difficulty resisting the advances of male or female counterparts.

He said a special component of sexual and reproductive health is being conceptualised for parents, following their concerns that they were uncomfortable discussing the issue of sex with their children.