Erebus Report

Executive Summary

As a not-for-profit organisation, Life Education Australia provides positive, preventative drug and health education programs which motivate, encourage and empower young people to make smart life choices for a healthy future, free from the harms associated with drug misuse. Life Education's mission is excellence in drug education especially for young people. Life Education is the largest non-government provider of drug and health education throughout Australia reaching 750,000 primary and secondary school students each year.

This Review has been commissioned by the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing, to provide Life Education with a means of conducting a scoping study that will identify the key principles of effective delivery of drug education in schools. The key outcome expected of this work is to provide Life Education Australia with an overview of current activities in this area in order to review and possibly refine its current drug education models, and if necessary, adapt programs in line with identified best practice. Life Education subsequently engaged Erebus International to undertake the scoping study

This Review focussed on the central questions of firstly, whether Life Education’s current approach to delivering drug education is in line with the research on known best practice in school drug education and secondly, whether Life Education’s current delivery model is the most appropriate means through which it can achieve its mission.

The Life Education approach has been questioned by some members of the broader educational community, particularly since the publication of research by Hawthorn in the mid-1990s. However, Hawthorn’s report on Life Education in the mid 1990s is not an accurate reflection on programs and practices in 2006.

The review of Life Education identified significant achievements in a range of areas:

• Life Education’s materials and resources are based on sound theory and current research. The overall efficacy of the materials is also being enhanced through the drive towards seeking national consistency.
• Life Education adopts a holistic perspective to its work by focussing on the overall health and well being of students as its essential guiding principle with schools and students.
• From the early years of schooling, Life Education, through its various lessons, puts students in situations where they need to make decisions, solve problems and interact with other students in discussing possible alternative actions to address problem situations relating to their own health and well-being.
• The real life settings of the learning experiences, complemented in the early years by the charismatic Healthy Harold, provide an excellent model for teachers to follow up in this area, once the Life Educator has left the school.
• The comprehensive and detailed links within learning materials to State and Territory curriculum frameworks are greatly appreciated by teachers and school executive.
• The need to develop strategies that Life Education can initiate in empowering and assisting teachers and schools to more systematically engage students with the area of health and well being.
• As an organization that is external to education systems, Life Education can only operate as an “agent of influence”. It is, however, now well placed to play a strong leadership role, given its national structure and depth of human resources resident in the team of Educators it employs. Leadership in this sense should be viewed in the broadest sense of that word, not as a top-down approach, but as working through partnerships and strategic alliances to achieve the common goals of all concerned.
• Life Education’s modus operandi for the future could encompass an increased advocacy role for good practice in drug education. Drug education is best taught as part of a sustained, whole school program. Building the capacity of classroom teachers to undertake this role is central to creating the conditions for school success.

Emerging challenges for Life Education were also identified: Despite these emerging challenges, a recent survey indicated that over 91% of teachers who had been recipients of the Life Education visit, sought to ensure the visit was repeated for their students. Such evidence reinforces the current levels of teacher satisfaction with the service provided by Life Education and further highlights the active role it can play as it begins to focus on local teacher capacity building to ensure sustained student outcomes in the future. Erebus Report