HECAT – Health Education (framework) Curriculum Analysis Tool

Abstract

Recent international research on health behaviour in school-age children reports negative trends, highlighting the importance of improving children’s health behaviour from a young age. The school is one of the most important places for socialising children to healthy lifestyles, according to the setting-based approach to health education and health promotion. Building on a holistic approach to health, modern health education addresses the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, social and societal dimensions of health. Health education is successful when it aims at habit change, i.e. helping to transform lifestyles into a system of habits of pleasure and thus a quality life for a lifetime. In Hungary, the objectives of health education and health promotion in public education are defined in the National Core Curriculum, and detailed in framework curricula, local curricula and pedagogical programmes. This paper aims to provide a brief, awareness-raising introduction to a tool for analysing health education (framework) curricula (HECAT). HECAT is designed to enable a consistent and comprehensive analysis of the representation of health education and health promotion in national-, frameworkor local curricula, the results of which can be used to revise, develop and strengthen curricula and thus enable school health educators to better influence the health behaviour and health indicators of school-age children and young people. The document can be used as an effective analytical tool by both the education provider and the school. HECAT can also be used to analyse the national core curricula, but works best when used to analyse the detailed health education and health promotion framework curriculum.