Thanks Sarah, to stress the issue of population growth. pupil: stance ratio might counteract or stall any statistics.

In terms of donors and other various initiatives, it must be always clear that no matter how many funds "we" collect and spend, it cannot be sufficient. Unless we don't have real government bye-in, and adress the issues Marielle mentioned above, we fail.

I want to throw in 3 questions here:

1. Which countries have adopted specific and adequate budget lines for WASH in schools (infrastructure + maintenance + hygiene education), that are also available to each school?

i am aware of a SWAP in Kenya, the "Kenya Education Sector Support Programme" which enables direct grants to schools for improvement of infrastructure. Unfortunately, schools still don't access enough funds to provide for soap, cleansing materials, toilet paper, which competes with other items on the small school budget. But it goes into the right direction. It would be interesting to read some experiences from the KESSP here.

2. Concerning ownership of the schools, to build and maintain and educate: During a trip to Kenya it was also interesting to discuss with SWASH+, who had a typical donor driven model (design, selecting and paying construction company) and a newly introduced model. In the later the school sanitation team decided how funds were spend, entirely managed the funds , and oversaw construction. the School headmaster was so enthusiastic "into" the project, no doubt he will make sure that the toilet will be build correctly and maintained. contrary to the conventional model school headmaster who was very passive. (it reminded me a bit on the shift in sanitation from supply to rather demand-led approaches) Is this later model happening widely?

and lastly:

3. as data is reported back from some countries on their pupil:stance ratio, isn't it really time to establish a global overview, similar like the JMP data but for WASH in Schools?

I am not aware of these in a document or on a website, because I was recently trying to gather figures for the SACOSAN school session, but failed. we all know JMP is powerful for advocacy and monitoring, so can be a WASHinSchools-JMP.