§ Mr. Andrew F. Bennettasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what work has been done by his Department to promote education concerning drugs and drug abuse in school curricula for both secondary and primary schools.
§ Mr. Dunn£2 million has been made available through the education support programme mainly to enable local authorities to appoint a member of staff to stimulate and co-ordinate action in the education service aimed at the prevention of drugs misuse, including where appropriate the development of curricular materials.
505WLast year the Department issued a new publication, "Drug Misuse and the Young", which has been made available in very large numbers to school teachers and to others in the education service.
The Department is also currently funding an important piece of development work which is being steered by the Health Education Council and involving other expert bodies to produce a range of curricular and supporting materials aimed at young people aged 14 to 18. These should be available later this year.
In addition to the material produced or promoted by the Department, there is a good deal of useful material produced by other bodies including ISDD, TACADE and the Lions Clubs International working in association with others. Although most of the material is aimed primarily at children of secondary age, an interesting initiative has been taken by the Wirral local authority to produce materials aimed specifically at younger pupils and the Department has provided some supportive funding.
§ Mr. Andrew F. Bennettasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what training is made available to teachers for coping with drug abuse among the pupil and the student population.
§ Mr. DunnMany local education authorities are already undertaking some useful work in this area: in some cases their efforts have been supported by bodies with appropriate expertise, notably TACADE.
The Department has identified work in this area as being of particularly high priority and a number of short courses under the aegis of Her Majesty's inspectorate have been held as part of the regional course series; more of these are planned.
The package of educational materials which the Department is funding through the agency of the Health Education Council—and which involves bodies including TACADE—will include components aimed specifically at the training of teachers and providing support for curriculum developers. This material will be available later this year; as an interim measure the Department issued last year the booklet "Drug Misuse and the Young" which has been made available to the teaching force in large numbers and which sets out some useful, basic information.
Within the education support grant programme £2 million has been set aside in 1986–87 for work relevant to drug misuse and local authorities have been encouraged to regard the funding of appropriate forms of teacher training as one of the areas in which the funding might be deployed.
The Department is keeping under review what possibilities there might be for further initiatives in this field.