A cloud of grannies

Quoting Arthur C. Clarke, "If children are interested then education will happen",  Professor Sugata Mitra has repeatedly shown that this happens.  He is Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University, and has demonstrated that children will learn with minimal help using computers.

Have you seen "Slumdog Millionaire" or read the book?  That was inspired by Sugata Mitra's first experiment in this direction, when he installed Hole in the Wall computers in Delhi.  There, without any instruction, children learned to use computers.  You could call this minimally invasive education.

To take this a stage further, mediators can guide the children using the grandmother method.  What is the grandmother method?   Standing behind them and admiring  them all the time, little more than that.  So now they have 200 volunteers admiring students around the world (India, Africa, Columbia) using Skype, a webcam, and a microphone.

There are many places where for various reasons teachers don't want to go and they aren't all in developing countries.  They are often the places where teachers are needed most.  It could be that minimally invasive education could be part of the answer.

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
~William Butler Yeats

Education and empowerment

Photo by Mohammed Amin Jibril/IRIN

It was heartening, I thought, to read during this week leading up to International Women's Day about Fathiya Hassan in Somaliland, who has distinguished herself in a man's world. She is the first female car-washer in the capital, Hargeisa, and has been for the last two years. Then I read a little further and realised that it isn't good news, not at all.

She is only 12 years old, so she started when she was 10. Where has her childhood gone? Most of her clients are women, which she likes, because the men are inclined to pay her less, or threaten to beat her rather than pay at all. The boy car-washers don't think she should be there at all.

But she has to work, she has to help support her family of 11 in Abaye settlement of the capital, because her parents can't manage to provide for them all. She would far rather be going to school rather than making this particular mark in her male dominated world.

Where do you start to try to improve things? She has the freedom to work alongside boys and that is something. But she doesn't have the freedom to go to school. Will she then fall into the same cycle, so often heard, of early marriage, early babies and many of them? Because young uneducated girls' don't have a good knowledge or understanding of contraception and they haven't the confidence to negotiate. Their children are less likely to do well at school or to continue their education beyond the minimum, and daughters in particular are likely to drop out.

The focus must be to empower girls, so that they can make their own decisions, and create their own futures. And how do you empower girls? Education, education, education.

A powerful voice

Labor migration has been a historical fact of life throughout West Africa. While trade routes have long been a part of the regional economy, patterns of labor migration were established during the colonial period, which is still evident today. Mali is the third poorest nation in the world, according to the Human Development Index. As a result, it is common for people to migrate from Mali to other countries, such as Côte d’Ivorie, or from rural Mali to urban centers, such as the capital of Bamako.

Education in Mali is supposedly compulsory and free up to age 12. Still, classrooms are overcrowded, and many times led by untrained teachers who use sub-standard curriculums. In addition, students are left with the responsibility to purchase uniforms and supplies. When taking into account rates of enrollment, attendance and completion, the education system of Mali is ranked exceptionally low, especially among girls.

For most Malian parents, it is more economically beneficial to the family if their children work, rather than attend school. In 2002, nearly half of children ages 10 to 14 were part of the Mali work force. They often migrate to find work. Usually, the migration begins as a voluntary act to earn income for the family and/or to accumulate a dowry; often these children end up in an involuntary life of exploitation and servitude.

Many children who make their way to the capital city of Bamako end up becoming one of the city’s "street kids." The average age of these children is 15, and they have no form of adult supervision. While the literacy rate in Mali is altogether very low, the female literacy rate is much lower than that of males. So girls are less able to handle life on the city streets and are more susceptible to being forced into domestic servitude. In Africa, 85 percent of child domestic workers are girls.

Domestic servants are discriminated against, often contracted unwillingly to employers, and are worked long hours for little to no pay. Lack of governmental oversight subjects domestic servants and girls working on the street to unchecked sexual harassment and abuse. There are a number of laws to curb the exploitation of child labor and the trafficking of children, but enforcement is virtually non-existent. Unless, there are significant measures to enforce those laws, the same heartbreaking story will play over and over for domestic servants and other "street kids."

Jacqueline Dembele Goita, also known as Madame Urbain, is one of the lucky ones. Born in Mali, during an era when it was almost unheard of for girls to go to school in the impoverished country, Madame Urbain’s father sent her to school. Today, she uses her education to help hundreds of girls and young women, who flock to the capital city of Bamako every year in search of a better life.

From CARE

The power of education

Girls' education provides perhaps the single highest return on investment in the developing world

Educated girls:

• Tend to marry later
• Are better paid in the workplace
• Have fewer, healthier children
• Are more likely to send their own children to school
• Are better able to protect themselves against HIV
• Assume a more active role in decision-making throughout their lives

Screen print from the Girl Effect video

Without education a girl is likely to be trapped in an early marriage which reduces her chances to develop personally and generally results in early pregnancy and birth before her body is sufficiently mature. This in its turn can lead to complications or death. Young girls rarely have any knowledge of birth control or issues such as sexually transmitted diseases/HIV. In addition, they are often married to much older men which leads to a power imbalance, frequently resulting in violence towards the young wife.

Mothers are primary educators in any setting, so educate girls and the next generation has the best possible chance of a good start.

There are of course many obstacles to education, not least of which is the availability of suitable schools. UNICEF is backing a Schools for Africa project to build child-friendly schools where they are needed. On Yummy Biscuits's blog today, you can see the difficulties that many children face.

She didn't exist

Photo from Flickr/lastavatar. Commercial Commons Licence.

Rasha lives in a small rural village in Egypt. Girls in villages like hers don't normally have birth certificates. It's as if they didn't exist. With the birth certificates come their identities and all their rights as citizens. Girls in villages like hers don't normally go to school, but she desperately wanted to, and persuaded her father to let her. But the school wouldn't let her enrol because she didn't have a birth certificate. So she stayed at home.

Fortunately for Rasha, a teacher came to the village asking girls to enrol at school. She allowed Rasha to start school without her birth certificate, and helped her apply for one. Now Rasha is 15, she has finished her primary education in three years (normally six) and has gone on to preparatory school. And her father is working with families, encouraging them to send their daughters to school and helping them obtain birth certificates.

The girl effect by CARE.

International Literacy Day

A little late, but better late than never.

I wouldn't know you, and you wouldn't know me, if neither of us could read. We take it for granted, you and I, that we can gather information, serious or trivial, educational or entertaining, wherever we are. Whether or not we do is up to us.

But think of all the people in the world who haven't had that opportunity, who don't have that choice. People who haven't been able to go to school. All the children in the developing world or in war-torn areas who still can't go to school.

It doesn't stop at not being able to read a book. How are they to lift themselves out of poverty, to learn about the world, to find out how to protect themselves against diseases such as AIDS? Children who don't learn to read are defenceless. Yes, there are radios, even theatre groups who tour to spread information, but how easy it is to forget the detail. To acquire information for ourselves we need the ability to read.

From UNESCO:

Research has repeatedly demonstrated the direct correlation between people’s level of literacy and their chances to maintain good health. For instance, a study conducted in 32 countries shows that women with secondary education are five times more likely to be informed about HIV/AIDS than women who are illiterate. Another example: the rate of infant mortality is higher when the mother can neither read nor write.

There are 163 million people in sub-Saharan Africa who cannot read. We should do something about it.

International Literacy Day

A more personal charity

Young children in school. Ghana. Photo: Curt Carnemark /World Bank. From Flickr, Creative Commons licence

Yesterday I had to do some fairly extensive research on the internet, looking at various education-based sites. One had an appeal in the sidebar for teachers and schools to consider sending surplus textbooks to a school in Ghana.

Following the links, as you do, I found Friends of Tafo, which operates in Kwahu-Tafo, the ancestral home of Gyearbuor Asante, who played Matthew in the Channel 4 comedy, Desmond's.

The charity works on a more holistic approach than many. It concentrates all its efforts on this one small town (pop. 5,500) in rural Ghana, where unemployment is about 80%. This means many children can't go to school because they can't afford books or uniforms, and the schools themselves are in poor condition. All of which leads to further unemployment.

The projects undertaken aim to encourage self-development in education, health and infrastructure, and employment.

· Funding teachers for and renovation of the Senior Secondary School
· Enabling training workshops in soap-making, tie-and-dye and textiles
· Starting training courses for the Disabled Association in leatherwork and tailoring
· Establishing an eye care programme
· Setting up bee-keeping cooperatives for income generation
· Founding a music academy for promotion of talent and musical culture
· Establishing school twinning programmes between Tafo and the UK
· Funding school fees for 'needy pupils'
· Repairing wells to improve water quality and safety
· Encouraging Ghana's first Edible Almond Oil project, being developed in Tafo
· Resourcing the town's first computer classroom, for pupils and townspeople
· Rebuilding the Islamic Primary School
· Providing in-service Teacher Training
· Equipping the town's first Science Lab
· Building a Community Library
· Improving sanitation in schools and the community's wells

They are supported in a number of different ways and donors provide not only money but also much-needed equipment, hence the appeal for surplus text books from teachers. They can find uses for many things and will often fund a project that is of particular interest to the donor.

A social vaccine

Children going to school in Kwa-Zulu Natal.

From the World Bank Photo Collection on Flickr. Creative Commons Licence.

A report from the London School of Tropical Medicine and the University of Witwatersrand gives details of a study carried out in rural areas in South Africa, looking at the sexual behaviour of young people aged 14 to 25 with particular attention whether there is any difference in HIV rates between school attenders and similar school non-attenders.

The findings are:

• Both sexes in school reported fewer sexual partners than similar out-of-school people.
• Girls in school reported greater condom use, less frequent sex and partners closer to their own ages.
• The most striking result was that boys were much less likely to be HIV positive.

The leader of the team, Dr Hargreaves, says

Our study suggests that, in South Africa, being in school can shape young people's social networks, leading to less high-risk sexual behaviour and, therefore, lower rates of HIV infection. We also recently conducted a review of 36 studies across sub-Saharan Africa which came to the same conclusions - that across a number of countries, those with higher education may now be at lower risk of HIV infection, reversing previous trends. We need to accelerate efforts to increase access to education, including secondary education, if we are going to make an impact on this epidemic.

I haven't seen the full report, so I am presuming they took into account whether or not the students who were HIV positive didn't attend school because of that, rather than the other way around.

It is very encouraging that it is possible to add a "social vaccine", education, to the biomedical efforts to eradicate HIV/Aids.

One laptop per child revisited

Further to my previous post on the subject, Intel has now pulled out of the project. It seems they want to concentrate on their own rival machine. Reading the comments to one of the BBC articles, I am pleased to see I am not the only person to think there may be other priorities.

Soap for Africa - and profit for Unilever

Unilever are backing a major campaign in Uganda, and later Kenya, Tanzania, Senegal and Benin, to encourage hand washing - and the use of Lifebuoy soap. It states openly that it wants to make washing hands with soap a habit in order to sell more bars of its Lifebuoy soap. It is not being passed off as corporate social responsibility, which is a refreshing change.

Several organisations such as UNICEF, USAid, and the Gates Foundation, are involved in the campaign to encourage hand washing before eating and after going to the toilet. Although the amount of money being invested is tiny compared with other campaigns, it could be extremely cost-effective. According to the World Health Organisation, in Uganda alone, 140 out of 1000 children will die before the age of five, 17% from diarrhoea and 21% from pneumonia.

These organisations could conduct their campaign themselves but Unilever brings marketing skills, and more sophisticated ways of shaping behaviour beyond simple public health education. Unilever stands to gain by being seen to be in partnership with organisations such as UNICEF, and they are hoping that their Lifebuoy soap will be linked so closely with hygiene and health that people will be prepared to pay more for it than the basic soap already available.

Although I still feel uncomfortable about a multinational company being involved in this sort of thing, I'm not quite as concerned as with the Procter & Gamble campaign. Unilever are at least being perfectly open about it. Nevertheless, it remains the case that big business is attempting to manipulate people who can ill afford it to buy unnecessary products. Simply washing with ordinary soap would be an enormous step forward.

From the Financial Times Deutschland

A blow for the sciences and for the French education system

The latest PISA survey (Programme for International Student Assessment) from the OECD has shown that although many countries have made great improvements, students are continuing to shun the sciences – only 37% wanted a career involving science and only 21% would like to spend their life in advanced science.

At a time when scientific and technological know-how is helping to drive growth in advanced economies, the results of PISA 2006 reveal wide variations in skills levels. Student attitudes to science will be crucial to countries' economic potential in tomorrow's world.

Students from families with a more advantaged socio-economic background were more likely to show a general interest in science, and this relationship was strongest in Ireland, France, Belgium and Switzerland. One significant feature of a student’s background was whether they had a parent in a science-related career.

This is of specific interest to me because I am moving on to a job which is hoping to address that very problem of waning interest in the sciences.

I read about the survey originally from Développement durable le journal which was lamenting the fact that French students had lost places in all three areas covered by the survey: mathematics, science and comprehension. They performed at a level slightly below the average in spite of the weight given to mathematics in schools.

Students from Finland performed well in everything: top in sciences and mathematics, and second in comprehension. The argument that France has to cope with a multicultural population doesn't stand up though, because a country like Sweden with a large immigrant population produced excellent results.

In France 8% of students are high achievers (9% average) with 23% in academic difficulties (20% average). The UK has a similar numbers of students in difficulties but far more high achievers.

This too I find very interesting because one of the reasons heard the most for people moving from the UK to France is for a better education system. It seems they are moving out of the frying pan into the fire.

The study has also shown that the most expensive education systems do not necessarily produce the best results, nor is it automatically a case of elitism. Some of the high achieving systems are the most equitable – Finland, Korea, Canada.

Tampax and Always - for whose benefit?

Some girls in sub-Saharan Africa have a hard time being educated. Even if they are considered worthy of it, their families may not be able to afford the fees, or the absence of their work at home. When they do manage to attend school they may find there is little or no sanitation, and this causes many to skip school if they are menstruating, or giving up altogether.

The Plan International project I mentioned in an earlier post addresses this problem specifically, with toilet blocks designed in consultation with girls, and getting to the root of the problem. School attendance has improved sufficiently for the project to be rolled out to the rest of the country.

Two days ago Procter & Gamble FemCare brands announced a similar program in Kenya.

Working with HERO, the Protecting Futures program brings together the brands' global resources to help make a positive impact on these young girls by improving access to feminine hygiene products as well as education and health services, said Michelle Vaeth, Protecting Futures Program Director for P&G.

The program will bring puberty education, traveling health educators, nutritious feeding programs, educational support services, a pad distribution program, and significant construction projects to nine schools in the first year.

All very fine until I reached the pad distribution program, and I started to wonder if Tampax or Always are really suited to a life of poverty or near-poverty in rural sub-Saharan Africa. The costs of continuing provision will be high and who will cover those costs when the girls leave school? How will they manage when the facilities provided at the school are no longer available to them?

I would have been happier if they were providing mooncups which are much safer, re-usable and last for years. I can't help feeling that there is little altruism in Procter & Gamble's efforts, and that they are hoping to turn the girls into paying customers. And it starts to sound a tiny bit like the free samples of baby milk powder distributed even where it is ill-advised, just to stimulate a market.

I suppose it's not surprising that the announcement appears in CNN Money.

One laptop per child?

The One Laptop Per Child foundation, OLPC, aims to provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves.

They have done a superb job in producing a low cost, rugged, computer which can use alternative power sources - car battery, solar, foot-pedal or wind-up. Interestingly Intel produced a comparable laptop, the Classmate PC, with a similar aim of it being affordable for all, but they are now working in collaboration with OLPC. The Classmate can't use alternative power sources. Reading some of the reviews it seems that the OLPC is better aimed at younger children, and the Classmate at 12-16 year olds. Originally the idea was to use open-source software but there has recently been further controversy about Microsoft becoming involved.

The Classmate costs around $200 and the OLPC around $175, though they are hoping to reduce the costs when in full production. Apparently the sales have not been what might have been hoped.

Laudable as the idea to reduce the gap between the developing and developed world might be, have they considered just how many people in the world are struggling to live on less that $1 per day? That the most disadvantaged will fall still further behind?

If you can barely afford to eat, you are unlikely to go to school. If you don't go to school, you are unlikely to have a use for a laptop, no matter who buys it. And who is least likely to go to school in the developing world? In India there are 8 million fewer girls enrolled in primary education than there should be, in Africa 9 million. Even if they start primary education, girls are less likely than boys to complete it. Once again it will be girls who are most disadvantaged.

National Girl Child Day, Bangladesh

Since 2000, 30 September has been National Girl Child Day in Bangladesh. It is one day in the Child's Rights Week, with action organised at both national and local levels.

Nationally there are rallies and marches, but locally an effort is made to ensure rural communities, the vast majority of the population, are involved by Hunger Project volunteers leading celebrations in every area.

Dr. Badiul Alam Majumdar is President, The Girl Child Advocacy Forum, has written what I think is an excellent article on the consequences of gender discrimination in The Daily Star, much of which concerns girls and women all over the world.

The main points he makes cover:

• The "missing girls" caused by foeticide and infanticide causing population imbalance primarily in India and China.
• During childhood, 20% of girls in developing nations do not finish primary education and only 43% attend secondary schools.
• Adolescence brings on many other problems such as child marriage and premature parenthood leading to greater death rates for mother and baby; sexual abuse, exploitation and trafficking.
• In some countries the rate of HIV/Aids is up to 6 times higher for women, partly for physiological reasons but also because of lack of education, knowledge of risk factors and protection, and not having the right to say "no".
• Motherhood - 99% of maternal deaths occur in developing countries.
• During old age women often suffer double discrimination. Although they tend to live longer than men, in many countries they have little control over family resources and no inheritance rights so may face poverty at a vulnerable age.

It really is well worth reading the article in full.

Women's Reading Clubs in Malawi

I've had the BookAid logo in my sidebar for a long time now. BookAid promotes literacy in developing countries by creating reading and learning opportunities, working mainly in sub-Saharan Africa.

Malawi is one of the 10 poorest countries and it is estimated that 54% of women there cannot read. Additionally 14% of 15-49 year olds have HIV/AIDS.

The Malawi National Library Service runs the groups to encourage newly literate women. Through the clubs women can access information on health, education, family welfare and training.

Books are provided in Chichewa, Tumbuka and English. Cash is provided for the purchase of books in Chichewa and Tumbuka while BookAid provides reading matter in English from their stocks of donated books.

The benefits to women are:

• they read and learn about managing small businesses, income generating activities as well as cooking and sewing
• some pick up their education again
• they learn about HIV/AIDS, both its prevention and the care of people who are infected
• they gain some measure of independence
• they gain confidence and camaraderie

A slideshow is available here, which should be embedable but every time I try, the window closes and I have to start all over again!

Girl-friendly toilet facilities in Ghana

Absenteeism from schools has been particularly high amongst adolescent girls because of issues surrounding menstruation, and this often leads to dropping out from school altogether.

After consultation with girls, special toilet facilities have been designed and put into place in ten locations. They had to have good washing facilities, privacy, and be safe and secure. They have been put in place by Plan International, a child-centred development organisation with no religious, political or governmental affiliations, at a cost of $3,500 per block.

Coupled with education and information, these facilities have been successful in improving school attendance, so now the government wants to extend the programme throughout the country.

Education, education, education

After my last post complaining about part of my education I read three articles which made me realise just how many children would be delighted simply to receive any education at all.

An IRIN article discusses a report published by Action Aid (available as a pdf file ). The International Monetary Fund has set wage bill limits causing some countries to restrict the number of teachers recruited. As an example of the need for teachers, Malawi has 72 pupils to every teacher so would need almost double the current number of teachers to achieve a reasonable ratio. Tuition fees have been abolished in primary schools to enable all children to attend, but without additional teachers the experience is unlikely to be positive.

In Somalia Hawa Aden Mohammed has set up an education facility specifically for girls, from scratch. It now has 750 girls enrolled in the primary school, 2,400 in adult literacy classes, and there are also afternoon classes for 830 girls who have to work during the morning. There are not only formal education classes but they also learn about human rights, violence against woman and peace-building. Their education includes teaching them about the dangers of female genital mutilation.

A further project set up by Hawa Aden Mohammed is an outreach centre at the refugee camp in Galkayo where they teach children in two shifts. This may ultimately help Amina Alaman who would dearly love to go to school. She and her siblings have to work to help the family, but she dreams of going to school and becoming a teacher.

Breast cancer awareness

From the University of Oxford news of a study which questioned almost 1500 women and found that they were unaware of the increasing risk of breast cancer caused by age.

They were given a choice of 10-year age bands and had to choose where the greatest risk lay. 99% of the women questioned answered incorrectly, 56% saying age doesn’t matter. Only 0.7% answered correctly that a woman in her 80s had the highest risk.

Age is the strongest risk factor for breast cancer, with the chance being 1 in 25 compared with 1 in 70 for a woman in her 40s. The researchers think that the confusion is partly the “Kylie” effect of publicity for younger, well-known women who have been diagnosed, and partly because routine screening is offered only up to the age of 70 in the UK, even though an older woman can request an appointment.

The study was funded by Cancer Research UK and the Breast Screening Programme.

When you couple this with the very recent report from the University of Manchester which highlights a lower level of care for older women, things start to look very depressing for older women. They are likely to present late, and receive worse care when they do. The Manchester study found that women over 80 compared with women between 60 and 69 are less likely to:

• have a triple assessment (clinical evaluation, imaging, cytology/histology)

• receive surgery

• have a steroid receptor test to assess the efficacy of tamoxifen

• if they do have surgery they are less likely to have radiotherapy

The main drawback of this study would seem to be that they didn’t take into account the preferences of the patients which may have a considerable bearing on the results, but with the population aging as it is, and with people staying fitter and more active longer, it is important that women realise that they are at increased risk and do continue to be vigilant, and that they receive the care and attention they need if they do need treatment.

I do believe, at least among the general public, there is an attitude that sees disease in old age as inevitable and hardly worth treating. I remember when my father in law died from a heart condition people were inclined to shrug as if to say, “well he’s old” whereas one imagines they would express more concern for a younger person. This must inevitably mean that more money/effort will go to charities funding research into areas which are perceived as problems for younger people, breast cancer included it seems. I recently came across someone who had been for a cervical smear test and had met a woman there in her eighties. To my horror my acquaintance expressed surprise and said “at that age, why bother?”

Books for Boys

Earlier this year the Guardian book blog published a post "The wrong kind of reading lessons" which more or less says that the books being targeted at boys, while praiseworthy in their attempts to persuade boys to read, are reinforcing stereotypes: “a fast food menu of impoverished stereotypes …., based on rigid class systems and exclusion”. The article received a mixed reception.

This week Guardian Unlimited ran an article which reports that a government minister is advocating boys’ bookshelves in school libraries, again in an effort to encourage boys to read.

When they were young I did everything I possibly could to introduce my two sons to the pleasures of reading: library visits, story times, reading at bedtime. One of them turned out to be a reader, the other, well, perhaps he is a late developer.

Personally I don’t really think the content matters too much within certain limits. I was such an avid reader as a child that, living in Africa as we did, my parents couldn’t keep the supply of books going. That’s when I developed my liking for medical journals, specifically The Lancet. I happily read my way through the multiple Enid Blyton series and I really don’t think it did me any harm, for all their repetitiveness, limited vocabulary and dated attitudes. I remember one story which praised a “good” girl though I can’t remember why. I was not impressed so I clearly didn’t think I was likely to be included in that group. Strange the things which stick in your mind.

Where I do quibble about these “boys’ books” articles is at the division of reading matter into boys’ and girls’. As a girl I loved mysteries and adventures. Would they have been available to me if we had had a boys’ bookshelf at school? The books my younger son could be persuaded to read were usually about crafts. Would they have been on the girls’ shelf? Why compartmentalise reading like this, and worse still label it male and female? It could be alienating a sizable number of children who don’t feel their reading tastes fall into the “right” category.

Contraceptive Awareness Week

It's contraceptive awareness week in the UK. How many people know that? I happened upon it by following up an article in the Guardian somewhat by accident. You’d think they’d try a bit harder at the awareness.

Two surveys have been published to coincide with this event.

Schering Health Care surveyed 1020 women. Some of the figures are fairly staggering - 12% of women aged 26-34 have had an abortion; 20% of these had not been using contraception and 27% had forgotten to take their contraceptive pill. 30% have gone through with an unplanned pregnancy whilst in a long term relationship; 41% of these were not using any form of contraception at the time, and a further 29% had forgotten to take their pill. Well all right, in a long term relationship they possibly weren’t as concerned as they would have been otherwise, but it’s still bad.

Although nowhere like as bad as the Glasgow study which found that approximately 50% of women were using no contraception, the conclusion was similar: that there is a need for better contraceptive education. Schering, who produce long-acting reversible contraceptives, of course are not unbiased.

At the same time, the FPA published a survey to highlight other sex education issues. They surveryed 495 people over 18. Did this include 70 year olds? And what was the weighting “applied to the data to bring it into line with national profiles”?

I have to say I took the quiz and found a couple of the questions tricky so I’m not surprised that some of the results were poor. Again though, the results do highlight the need for better education. That 29% could think that jumping up and down, douching or urinating could prevent pregnancy is unbelievable (with the proviso that I don’t think the question was well phrased).