School Age Children Knowledge regarding Oral Hygiene- Effectiveness of Planned Teaching Programme in a selected school Bangalore, Karnataka

Background of the study: Oral hygiene is the regular practice of keeping one's mouth clean and free of disease and other problems (e.g. bad breath) by regular brushing of the teeth (dental hygiene) and cleaning between the teeth. It is very important that oral hygiene shall be carried out on a regular basis to enable the prevention of dental diseases and bad breath. Objectives of the study: To assess the effectiveness of planned teaching program onknowledge regarding oral hygiene among school age children. Methods: Pre experimental, one group pre and post test design was adopted in this study. The sample were chosen by non-probabilityconveniencesampling technique followed by purposivesampling method, consist of 40 school age childrens. The study was conducted at St Philomena English School, Kumaraswamy layout, Bangalore, Karnataka, India. Self- structured knowledge questionnaire is given to assess the knowledge on oral hygiene. Which followed by a planned teaching program on oral hygiene and administering the same questionnaire to assess the post test. Results: The findings of the study showed that the overall mean post-test knowledge score regardingoral hygiene among school age children was 15.35% with SD of 4.86 was significantly higher than the mean of pre-test 6.65% with SD of 2.17. Computed paired t-value 11.9 was higher than the table value 2.02 at p <0.05 level, there was significant association was found between the pre-test and post-test knowledge score. The results of the study revealed that majority of the respondents had inadequate knowledge regarding oral hygiene 14(35%) Moderate knowledge 1(2.5%) in the pre-test level. A Total 23(57.5%) had moderateand15(37.5%) had adequate knowledge regarding oral hygiene in the post test level. Conclusion: School-based oral health education interventions can have positive impacts on behavioural outcomes among children.our study concluded that the planned teaching programme on knowledge regarding oral hygiene among school age children in selected school, Bangalore was found to be effective in the enhancing knowledge of school age children as evidenced by the significant change between pre-test and post-test knowledge score.