“(The SHEU survey) was very, very useful. It gave us reassurance we weren’t missing a trick. For example not many pupils in the sample year groups were taking illegal drugs, which re-enforced our opinions. But the survey also raised issues and flagged some things up. We discovered that some of our girls weren’t eating enough – the percentage of girls in our school not eating lunch the day before the survey was higher than the county average. There were other concerns too, specifically around cigarettes, alcohol and attendance.
The school used this data and took a number of actions to address it. More female peer mentors were put in place and the school asked NEXUS (the Extended Schools service) for help, so they developed a programme for girls which addressed their eating patterns, healthy eating, sex education and self-esteem issues.
We ran an anti-bullying group for Year 9 as a preventative measure, based upon data provided by our current Year 10 students.
The travel data revealed that a high number of pupils took the car to school so we involved the BIKE-IT scheme who ran assemblies, brought in their bikes (including one with a pedal-powered smoothie maker!), and raised awareness of health and green issues.
The information about how happy the students were with their lives raised some concerns as far fewer girls were as happy as the boys, so work was done around developing aspirations, role-models and self-esteem."
Looking after ourselves?
Looking after ourselves?
Many years ago SHEU were invited to a conference of the Asthma Training Centre*, who were in the middle of a big effort to raise awareness of childhood asthma and to train school nurses about the management of asthma in schools. Dr Dave was interested to discover that while medical staff think of well-managed asthma as being keeping the occurrence and severity of symptoms at a minimum, many young people with asthma seemed to have a goal of taking as little medication as possible.
I was reminded of this recently when looking at some research for a client who was interested in the lifestyles of young people with long-term illnesses or disabilities. A simple view of the matter might suggest that if you had an illness or disability, you might be motivated to look after yourself better. However, that wasn't what we saw in the results.
Between 5% and 10% of pupils reported having some sort of disability and about 10% reported some sort of long-term illness.
44% of young people in Year 8 reporting drinking alcohol. For those in the same age group who have a disability or long-term illness the figure was 53%; a similar association
was found in other year groups.
Now, drinking alcohol in itself may not be a cause for concern. However, we also found higher levels of experimentation with illegal drugs among young people with a long-term illness or a disability than among those with no such concerns.
There are many confounding variables here of course, but at face value, it suggests that young people with existing health concerns are more and not less likely to engage in health-risky behaviour. Have they given up on their health, or have they just got a more realistic perspective on the relative risks to their health?
* Regis, D (ed.) (1995). Asthma in the Classroom, Asthma Training Centre. Exeter: SHEU.