Introduction: Oral health is an important part of children’s general health and quality of life. Dental caries remains a common disease among primary school children; therefore, oral health education plays an important role in preventing diseases of the teeth and oral cavity, as well as in developing appropriate oral hygiene habits. Purpose: The purpose of the diploma thesis is to present the importance of oral hygiene among primary school children and effective approaches to implementing oral health education in the school environment. Methods: A review of professional and scientific literature was conducted. The literature was searched in the PubMed, Scopus, MEDLINE, CINAHL Ultimate and ScienceDirect databases, as well as through the Google Scholar search engine. The review included studies addressing traditional, interactive, digital and combined approaches to oral health education among children and adolescents. Results: The findings show that traditional approaches, such as explanation, lectures, demonstration and the use of written health education materials, improve children’s basic knowledge of oral health, but have a limited impact on long-term behavioural changes. Interactive and combined approaches show greater effectiveness, as they include children’s active participation, the use of games, animations, videos, digital applications and practical demonstrations. Such approaches increase children’s motivation, enable easier understanding of the content and contribute to the gradual development of oral hygiene habits. Approaches that enable children to repeat content, practise proper toothbrushing techniques and connect acquired knowledge with everyday habits are particularly important. Support from parents and teachers also plays an important role, as children reinforce their daily toothbrushing habits mainly in the home and school environments. Discussion and conclusion: In the prevention of dental caries among primary school children, comprehensive and long-term approaches to oral health education that combine traditional, interactive and digital methods are the most appropriate. Improvement in knowledge alone does not ensure long-term behavioural changes; therefore, continuous and systematic implementation of health education, repetition of content, and the involvement of parents, teachers and healthcare professionals are important. The approaches must be adapted to the children’s age group, understandable and focused on children’s active participation. In Slovenia, it would be reasonable to conduct an empirical study on the effectiveness of different approaches to oral health education among primary school children and to examine the representation of these approaches in existing preventive programmes.
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