All schools have to raise funds and most people will consume alcohol. It is up there with ‘birth, death and taxes’ as life’s certainties. Recently government cuts have increased the strain on schools and led them to have to find new ways to coax more money from parents and the wider community. Nothing wrong with that you might say. Why shouldn’t local communities support local education? This is not the time to deal with this discussion but it should be said that in a time of austerity and when most people are having to either make cut backs or increase their debts the problem is usually being passed from one institution to another. From local schools to local families.
Wanting the best (whatever that might be) for our children is a social norm and so is giving up our time and money to help this to happen. Obviously economic circumstances make this easier for some than for others but the will is usually entrenched in all our thinking, doing and giving. Finding ways to help with school trips, to buy laptops, to renovate the playground… anything that will help to improve the school experience. We tend to want what is ‘best’.
However, sometimes the line (if it exists at all) is overstepped. This is often not any individuals fault. They may not have considered their actions and the consequences in depth or they may not have the knowledge or the time to acquire it. However there is a fault. Whether of the headteacher or the governors or the parent/teacher group or all of them they should have discussed the line that won’t be crossed and be able to explain their decision. After all we don’t see cigarette vending machines in our schools or colleges do we? Some may be thinking – but it would be against the law to sell them. Not to teachers it wouldn’t but we do not dream of giving the impression that cigarettes should be openly sold and smoked in front of impressionable children. So what is the difference with alcohol?
Local primary schools in Dorset are contradicting the message from the government; the National Institute for Clinical Care Excellence (NICE) and numerous health care professionals. They are openly asking children to bring a bottle into school as an exchange for a non school uniform day; they are openly providing a tombola packed with alcohol and in some cases it is the children who come forward and collect the prizes on behalf of their parents. So is this acceptable? Is it crossing the line? I spoke to a school governor from Dorchester; a parent from a local village school and a local headteacher. Their responses were very revealing.
The governor was shocked that any school would consider it and was adamant that her school would not adopt this practice. She did though admit that alcohol was available at adult only events and that the family orientated summer fayre did have a bar ‘like the Dorchester Show’. The parent and the headteacher both admitted that when confronted with the open provision of cigarettes scenario that they had never thought through the similarities but the parent stressed that ‘cigarettes had become a lot less socially acceptable’. They both agreed that the mixed messages that the school was giving could undermine the health education that their school and other schools gave.
So where does all this get us? On the one hand examination of alcohol use suggests that most people consume it to sensible levels but that the numbers who do not (including binge drinking) are on the rise. Alcohol misuse is a factor in 30% of suicides each year. Marriages with alcohol problems are twice as likely to end in divorce. Around half of all violent crimes, and a third of domestic violence incidents, are linked to alcohol misuse. In a recent survey, 14% of 15 and 16 year olds in the UK had been drunk 20 times or more during the last 12 months and 50% have been drunk at least twice and it is estimated that 360,000 children aged 11-15 had been drunk in the last week. (Talk about Alcohol).
A combination of the intellectual and the emotional tells us that if children are to succeed in school then their teachers and parents will have to play a key role. Wanting the ‘best’ for their children surely does not correlate with the data above and that unless we confront the misplaced legitimacy that we give to alcohol within our schools this problem will haunt us and many other families.
Jason Cridland
Further reading:
Call to stop alcohol at primary school events
‘Social drinking’: the hidden risks
Impact of Alcohol Consumption on Young People
