Why do pupils need alcohol education in schools? And does it work?

It’s really good sometimes, to be put on the spot – why did you set up The Alcohol Education Trust? What’s so special or different about the Talk About Alcohol Programme?  Presenting at a conference (in this case the European Society for Prevention Research this October) means you have to articulate your passion and the path you have taken. So lets deal with why a programme for 11- 18 year olds on alcohol delivered in schools across the UK came about, or was needed.

There’s very clear evidence to show that the younger a teenager begins drinking and the frequency with which they drink affects their prospects in future life. It makes sense really, if you’re out ( and notice the emphasis on ‘out’ rather than in the home) drinking and partying when you’re 14, you’re hardly going to be focusing on your school work. Moreover, where there’s drinking at parties or parks with groups of friends, there are more likely to be other temptations around such as cigarettes and legal highs. As we know, alcohol relaxes you and you’re more likely to let your barriers down and make more reckless or risky decisions. The younger you are the more likely the negative consequences are to be – so we have a simple goal to raise the age at which young people start drinking from the average at the moment in the UK of 13 ½ for a whole drink ( there’s a world of difference between tastes and sips on special occasions and whole drinks) to the Chief Medical Officers  guidelines of 15.

What we also know is that if parents don’t know where their kids are, who they are with, or set clear boundaries as to what the house rules are and the consequences for breaking them, then schools can only do a certain amount. So we knew we had to design an element to involve parents and carers via school, online and newsletters to give them the confidence, facts and figures to equip parents to have ‘good conversations’ with their children – with effective tactics for different age groups

We also knew that there are over 3.6 million kids that we need to reach, and the only way we could do so was to equip teachers and make them confident in teaching about alcohol in a balanced way. So training teachers to be confident in using the materials whilst bearing in mind their own time pressures was crucial. Few teachers are specialists yet are still expected to teach PSHE to their tutor groups or year.

Finally, there were quite a lot of programmes being used in different countries as well as the UK for us to be able to look at to see what worked – hardly any were able to show a true effect in reducing drinking, binge drinking or antisocial behaviour – but a couple really did. One is a programme called SHARHP from Australia and in use in some other countries too and the second was Unplugged’ from EUDAAP for smoking, drinking and drug use trialled across Europe but not the UK. There was not an evaluated programme for teachers to use in UK schools, but we had some good examples and inspiration to base any outreach on.

The final catalyst was PSHE, where subjects such as sex and relationship education, alcohol education, careers advice and  bullying are covered was not made compulsory in the 2009 Education Bill. So there was no compulsory requirement for schools to deliver alcohol education at all. This is despite the fact that 88% of adults drink in the UK and all our kids will encounter alcohol as they grow up and need to know and understand the pros and cons and laws that may effect any decision they make. We also knew that with a change of Government being imminent that work would go back to scratch in proving the case for the need for alcohol education.

So as a result, a group of 40 like minded teachers, PSHE specialists, governors, nurses, doctors, police officers and parents collaborated to help put together a flexible programme, based in best practice that could work for the UK. This took over a year – and then of course it had to be piloted and trialled in schools, to see whether teacher and pupils liked it, could implement it easily – but of course to see if it worked! There are many projects and speakers going into schools with programmes that haven’t been evaluated – and it is so important to know if they work! So we trialled and tested and tweaked our 100 page teacher work book and once it was being used in a significant number of schools (300), we knew we had to find a grant to see what the effects of the programme were – it should be noted that apart from one part time administrator everyone had given their time to talkaboutalcohol free of charge.

So we were established as a charity in 2010 and in 2011 secured a grant to be able to appoint The National Foundation for Education Research (NFER) to conduct an independent evaluation of our programme. They told us they needed to recruit over 3000 pupils and to carefully match schools – 15 to receive our programme and 15 similar ‘match’ schools (rural, city, cultural mix, SEND, etc) who would not. In fact NFER recruited over 4000 pupils in 34 schools  – who were then followed from the beginning of year 8 to the end of year 9. The results were spectacular – after just 4 lessons being delivered in Year 8 and a further 2 in Year 9,  a significant number of pupils receiving The talkaboutalcohol programme  delayed the onset of drinking (just 8% took up drinking versus 20% in the match schools), significantly increased their knowledge AND enjoyed the lessons! Teachers liked it too and only one school dropped out due to a change of staff over 2 years – this is very unusual and fidelity to a programme is crucial.

So, this meant we had all the elements needed to really shout about the success of the talkaboutalcohol programme – the final part of which is how affordable it is! It costs just £45 a year to support a school with the teacher work book, phone and email support and bi termly newsletters. This is because teachers are empowered to teach the programme with guidance themselves. The success and reasonable price of the programme also means that The Alcohol Education Trust has been very successful in gaining grants to be able to support schools free of charge with this package to date.

There are over 3000 schools however, and we are now in a position where we need to completely overhaul our www.talkaboutalcohol.com website – it’s over 500 pages, so that’s over £20,000. We also wish to expand our regional staff who go into schools and train teachers and hold talkaboutalcohol sessions for parents – this is by far the hardest part of what we do – but so important. Each coordinator costs us £25,000 to support – there are many other things on our wish list too – improving our visual rich resources for SEND and those who have English as a second language, and a programme to ensure PSHE  is taught by teacher training colleges and programmes.

Hopefully this lays out why supporting The Alcohol Education Trust – which is completely delivery driven, is widely used and liked, proved to work and affordable makes sense! To find out more visit our website. You can support us by texting DRY to 70660 and the £ and amount, or visit or donations page!