Abstract:

The connection of Spain in the European Union and the need to share policies, led to incorporate into the Organic Education Law (LOE) of 2006 the key competences in the school curriculum. This incorporation into the curriculum is an early commitment to bring the Spanish education system to international standards.

Among the eight key competences in the LOE, the competence in knowledge and interaction with the physical world takes into account the protection of the individual and collective health as key elements in people’s quality of life. Until the LOE, Health Education had been considered a cross-curricular subject of the curriculum. With the entrance of the new law, cross-curricular subjects disappear and Health Education and Hygiene do not constitute a specific key competence but they are included within the competence in knowledge and interaction with the physical world.

Health Education in schools should be part of the educational process, aimed to educate people in a holistic manner. It should not be limited to the acquisition of knowledge, but it should be aimed as a priority at the acquisition of skills that helps to observe, understand and improve life. Hygiene should be part of the Primary and Secondary curricula in order to encourage the awareness and the acquisition of healthy habits. It is necessary to address Hygiene education in schools and be part of the teacher’s daily work, so it is necessary to include these contents in the curricula proposed by the educational administrations.

Thus, with this research, we aim to study Hygiene competences that Spanish citizens must acquire in their compulsory step for the school and to make an approach to the competences in this topic that students can acquire through the possibilities provided in the Spanish official curricula.

To achieve this objective an analysis instrument has been defined. This instrument includes the nine main problems in Hygiene and the competences that students must acquire to face them. For this, and taking into account a literature review, a Delphi study and a meeting of experts in Health Promotion and Education have been carried out. Official curricula of Primary and Secondary Education, published in the Spanish Official Gazette (BOE), have been analyzed with the elaborated instrument in order to evaluate if they attend correctly to the Hygiene competences that students must acquire. The study results allow us to introduce curricular and educational proposals suitable for educational administrations, universities and teacher training centers.

Keywords:

Health competences, Hygiene, Curriculum, Compulsory education.