Alcohol and Young People

Andrew BrownCoordinator

Drug Education Forum

CONTEXT

The following charts have been developed using figures from Smoking, drinking and drug use among young people in England in 2006, Information Centre 2007

Proportion of pupils who had ever had an alcoholic drink

Proportion of pupils who had drunk alcohol in the last week

Proportion of pupils who had drunk alcohol in the last week, by age

Proportion of pupils who drank alcohol in the last week

Proportion of boys who drank alcohol in the last week

Proportion of girls who drank alcohol in the last week

Proportion of pupils who drank alcohol in the last week, by sex and age

Number of drinking days for those who had drunk alcohol in the last

week

Mean alcohol consumption of those boys who had drunk in the last week

Mean alcohol consumption of those girls who had drunk in the last week

How obtained alcohol in the last four weeks, by age

THE ROLE OF ALCOHOL EDUCATIONWhat can education hope to achieve?

What does alcohol education do?

Drug education should enable pupils to develop their knowledge, skills, attitudes and understanding about drugs and appreciate the benefits of a healthy lifestyle, relating this to their own and others’ actions.Drugs: guidance for schools, DfES 2004

What can alcohol education achieve?

Research shows that certain models of drug education can achieve modest reductions in the consumption of cannabis, alcohol and tobacco, and delay the onset of their use. Drug education also has a role in reducing the risks associated with drug use, reducing the amount of drugs used and helping people to stop.Drugs: guidance for schools, DfES 2004

Ofsted on Alcohol Education

By the end of Key Stage 4, pupils have a good knowledge of drugs and are aware of, but do not always accept, the risks associated with their use. In particular, pupils are less likely to reduce their use of alcohol or tobacco in the light of evidence of their harmful effects. For example, many pupils spoke of knowing their safe limit for alcohol but were not basing this on their understanding of the alcohol levels in various drinks but on their experience of how much alcohol they needed to consume to get drunk.

Ofsted’s Recommendations• Schools need to ensure that they give sufficient time to the

teaching of drug education so that the provision meets pupils’ needs.

• The overwhelming majority of young people regard tobacco and alcohol as the drugs that pose the most significant danger to them. This should be taken into consideration when determining the balance of time to be given to education about specific drugs and to solvent abuse.

• Links between drugs and themes such as sex and relationships education need to be more explicit so that pupils understand the links between drug use and risk-taking sexual behaviour.

NICE Draft Guidance

• Ensure alcohol education is an integral part of both the national science and personal, social and health education (PSHE) curricula, in line with DfES guidance.

• Ensure alcohol education is tailored for different age groups and their learning needs. It should aim both to reduce the harmful effects of alcohol use and develop the individual’s life skills. Education programmes should: – increase the individual’s knowledge of the harmful effects of alcohol and what

constitutes sensible drinking – help them to develop decision-making, assertiveness, coping and verbal/non-

verbal skills – help them develop their self-esteem – increase their awareness of how advertisements can entice people to drink – increase their awareness of the cultural unacceptability of alcohol misuse.

Everyone’s Not Doing ItSchool drug prevention programmes should incorporate teaching which corrects inaccurate beliefs about the normality and acceptability of drug use. If lesson time is limited, using it in this way would normally be more effective than teaching refusal skills. Normative beliefs are most relevant when the forms of drug use in question really are uncommon and not widely accepted among targeted pupils, but might be thought to be more common. Though experimentation with some drugs is practically normative among young people, regular use remains very far from normal. Stressing this message may be an effective antidote to overindulgence but may also be seen as condoning experimentation.

Drug and Alcohol Findings