The BBC reports on the RSA report on drugs that will be published today. Apparently the report will suggest:
drugs education is “inconsistent, irrelevant, disorganised” and “delivered by people without adequate training”, and its main focus should shift from secondary to primary schools.
I’ll be going to the launch of the report this evening and will try to report back here over the next couple of days.
Meanwhile you may want to read their paper, Responses to drug misuse: education and prevention, which says:
One of the most promising features of drug education appears to be its ability to delay the first use of drugs. This is significant, as most evidence suggests that the greatest drug-related harm is suffered by those who start using at the earliest age.
However, it points out:
Drug education is not always treated systematically but is taught in some schools sporadically by whoever is to hand, rather as Scripture or ‘extra games’ used to be.In the mid-1990s one English county became concerned about the range of drug education being taught in different districts and schools. ‘Whilst some schools offered comprehensive drug education programmes, others taught through discrete modules of work or events, isolated from other topics or skills being developed through the broader PHSE programme and wider curriculum … The concerns identified were:
- Teaching material … that had little connection with the context in which the children and young people lived and issues that were relevant to their lives.
- Widely differing needs of children and young people growing up in both rural and urban areas close to a big city, within the same county.
- An emphasis on stereotyped consequences of habitual use of Class A substances and extreme risks to lifestyle.
- A lack of continuity between the messages taught by different teachers, in different phases and by external visitors to the school.
- Where pupils’ drug education was restricted to isolated modules or events, later questions were often inconsistently answered by other adults.’
Filed under: RSA, drug education
