Basic Principles of Hygiene, Sanitation,
and Water in Schools

The basic principles that underlie successful hygiene, sanitation, and water in schools projects are similar to those that underlie sustained water and sanitation projects in communities. However, hygiene, sanitation, and water in schools have specific characteristics, and the basic set of principles must be adapted to address these.

What Is Different about Hygiene, Sanitation, and Water in Schools?

Hygiene, sanitation, and water in schools projects have three key characteristics:

The main users of school sanitary facilities are children, which calls for:
- Child friendly design of the facilities. For example, toilets for children require different dimensions than those for adults. Nevertheless, the fact that children have different physical abilities than adults is too often overlooked in school projects.
- Life skills-based hygiene education. Changing hygiene behavior is not easy. Often too much emphasis is given to promoting knowledge, without that knowledge being translated in appropriate skills and attitudes towards hygiene. Life skills-based hygiene education focuses on all three aspects: knowledge, skills and attitudes.
Building multi-stakeholder partnerships is critical. Because the Ministry of Education is in charge of schools, but the provision of school water supply and sanitation facilities may be the responsibility of a different ministry, a high level of coordination and collaboration between the Ministry of Education and other stakeholders is essential.
Support from the larger community is important. Investments in hygiene, sanitation, and water in schools will only achieve their potential benefits when both the water and sanitation facilities and the required changes in hygiene behavior are supported in the children's homes and communities.

Basic Principles of Hygiene, Sanitation, and Water in Schools

The lessons learned from community water supply and sanitation projects over many decades show that such projects are more sustainable when they follow a demand-responsive approach. With this approach, project beneficiaries guide the key investment decisions, take responsibility for the planning of facilities, making informed choices about the service, and take care of operation and maintenance of the facilities once constructed.

This section describes the basic principles for key components of hygiene, sanitation, and water in schools projects, which help to ensure sustainability. The principles are adapted from those that apply in community water supply and sanitation projects, supplemented with points that address the particular characteristics of hygiene, sanitation, and water in schools. Adherence to these principles can help to ensure that going to scale in hygiene, sanitation, and water in schools programs will be sustainable.

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