Abstract

Education and training in schools are essential elements in the development and socialization process of children from early childhood. The fact of considering health as a complete physical, mental and social wellbeing (World Health Organization (1848), WHO), and not only as the absence of illness, is closely related to the achievement of optimal levels of promotion and improvement in the quality of life and school performance in children. This research, carried out during the 2014-2015 academic year, attempts to analyze the ideas and attitudes of Compulsory Secondary Education (12 to 16 years old; compulsory) and High School (16 to 18 years; non-compulsory) students as regards health promotion in the school context. In order to perform this analysis, an ad hoc questionnaire was developed for 2337 students from the Province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife (Spain) and 15 follow-up interviews about the students’ answers to emergency situations in the school context were also carried out. Both questionnaire and interviews revealed the existence of unhealthy habits related to the level of education, gender and health training of the students’ parents. The results show that the “Questionnaire about attitudes and knowledge as regards health in the school context” (CACOSA) has been an adequate instrument to detect both important training needs and a lack of responsiveness to emergencies in secondary education schools as regards health education.

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