A team from Gujarat Council of Education, Research and Training (GCERT) is on a four-day Jharkhand visit to know about 'Udaan', the adolescent education programme AEP and its effect on students in Government schools. Udaan was launched by the State Government in 2006.

On day one, the team visited the Rajkiyakrit Balika Uchcha Vidyalaya in Sakchi to get a glimpse of how Udaan has affected children and their thought process. The team interacted with a group of students from classes VIII and IX.

The programme combines sexuality and reproductive health education and life-skills based education, holds great promise in promoting health knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours for in-school adolescents. However, there is little documented evidence on scaled-up and sustained initiatives for adolescent

Udaan, a school based adolescence education programme, implemented by the Department of School Education and Literacy (DSEL), Government of Jharkhand, aims to influence and empower the adolescent boys and girls with age appropriate knowledge on life skills and reproductive health and prepare them for a healthy transition to adulthood. The Udaan curriculum is part of the academic calendar and is transacted by teachers in State Government-run schools with technical assistance from Centre for Catalysing Change (C3).

The Udaan programme is guided by India’s national adolescence education framework which recognises adolescents as positive resource and emphasises on the need to nurture their potential and build their capacity. It was launched in December 2006 and is currently being implemented over 1,800 Government middle (class VI to VII), secondary (class IX) and senior secondary (class XI) schools across all 24 districts of Jharkhand (including non-residential day schools and 203 residential Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas (KGBVs)1 across the State. Over the last one decade, it has reached out to approximately 1 million adolescents (boys and girls) and built capacity of 87 master trainers, 2,600 in-service teachers and 600 pre-service teachers to transact adolescent education content

"We interacted with students and feedback was positive. We will study the model and will then implement it in Gujarat," said a member of the team.

Students were asked about the types of transmission of HIV which they answered. They were also asked how they would behave if they come across a HIV student in their school.