A Study of the Effectiveness of a Healthy Lifestyles Approach to Drugs Education with Children between 7+ and 11 years of Age

ABSTRACT

The present paper reports on a study of the efficacy of drugs education delivered to children aged 7 to 11 years through a carefully sequenced high-fidelity programme of classroom based curriculum enrichment activities supported by visiting drug education specialist educators. The programme was designed to map onto the national curriculum requirements of British primary schools and was framed within the conceptual boundaries provided by a ‘healthy lifestyles approach’. The programme operated through a spiral curriculum with each year of the programme building on the aims and objectives of preceding years. The overarching aim was to enable children to develop an increasingly sophisticated cognitive framework through which they would be empowered to make informed choices about being safe, healthy and drug-free. 240 children between 3+ and 10+ years of age, were assessed for knowledge and understanding of targeted healthy lifestyles issues prior to and at two points subsequent to the interventions. Children were drawn in approximately equal numbers from nursery classes through to year 6 across 14 schools in one large urban Authority in the North of England. The Authority had adopted a drugs prevention and education programme delivered by a National Charity and supported by teachers and parents. This paper reports on the data from a defined age segment of the total sample. Outcomes indicated that the intervention with subsequent teacher support in-class affected positively children's knowledge of how stay healthy and the likely impact of drugs, alcohol and smoking on the maintenance of health and well-being. However, it became clear that yr6 pupils in particular were overtly conscious of the likely future impact of older pupils on their ability to stay drug free on transferring to Secondary school. This study indicates that whilst interventions at primary school level can achieve valued objectives at the level of knowledge and understanding, the maintenance of these acquired dispositions into adolescence is unlikely in the absence of continuing programmes of education and support on a longterm basis. Interpreting what 10 year olds say, such programmes should enable individual children to acquire strategies of personal empowerment and support their intention to adopt a healthy lifestyle.