Welcome back to this far from normal Autumn term. We hope you managed a break over the summer and that pupils are settling back well.

We are very conscious that you and colleagues will be under huge pressure to ensure the safety of children and staff and enabling the academic catch up for many children.

However, it is now a statutory requirement to provide Relationships Education, RSE and Health Education, including alcohol education – and the health and wellbeing of pupils remains a priority for us all. There are exceptions for schools whose planning has been delayed, which you can read about them here.

Our regionally based team here at the AET are always here to support you without charge with any questions, requests, required training or support wherever you are based across the UK, just email kate@alcoholeducationtrust.org and we’ll link you with the right person.

Key Stages 3 and 4 – Years S2-4 for Scotland

To help you meet requirements, the AET resources and 6 ready to deliver lesson plans are carefully mapped to the new guidance, you can access the mapping document here. 

For ease of planning, sharing and delivery among staff, we have also adapted our Teacher Workbook to provide 6 ready to deliver lesson plans on topics such as alcohol and its effects, units and guidelines, alcohol and the law and staying safe. Each lesson is stand alone, but they are designed to be delivered with 4 lessons during Year 8/S2 or 9/S3 with 2 top up lessons in Years 9/S3 or 10/S4.

The implementation guidance is available here with the links to the individual PowerPoints at the end of the newsletter:

Key Stages 4 and 5 / Years S5 – 7 for Scotland

There are of course lesson plans and activities for older age groups including fact sheets on drink drive, tops tips for staying safe at parties and festivals and what is BAC which you can access here with activities, quizzes on the young people facing website www.talkaboutalcohol.com including a virtual nightclub and other interactive games.

We have added some excellent new film clips for older cohorts to use as ice breakers and conversation starters, covering drink spiking and detailed explanation of how alcohol affects our bodies and brains, which you can view via the 16+ icebreaker webpage.

We will also have PowerPoints and films available for age 16+ covering additional topics such as alcohol and violence, alcohol and consent and alcohol and cannabis coming shortly. To register your interest, please email kate@alcoholeducationtrust.org

Key Stage 2

Research evidence suggests that a more life skills and resilience approach without too much detail on drugs and alcohol works better for KS2; too much information can encourage curiosity and experimentation. Just 1% of 11 year olds drink, so Year 7/S1 is the earliest year we recommend specific alcohol education. You can view the activities we recommend for this Year group here.

Targeted approaches for young people who are misusing alcohol or who are more vulnerable to alcohol dependency

The AET have developed a toolkit of discussion cards, information and activities designed to be used on a one to one basis or for small groups. The resources allow teachers to cover sensitive topics through pictures and prompts. The toolkit is also suitable for young people with moderate learning difficulties through the use of colours, pictures and emojis to express reactions. The laminated resources can be used again and again and are fully supported online. These resource boxes cost £60 and can be ordered from our store, however, thanks to wonderful grant funding, in most cases we are able to offer ALL our resources free of charge to schools and settings such as children’s homes, special schools, PRUs, sports and youth clubs. Please contact kate@alcoholeducationtrust.org to see if you are eligible.

Drug and Alcohol Education Conference – 5^th February 2021

As you may know, we were due to run this conference in June. This has now been postponed to 5th February 2021 and will be held at the Guildhall in London. This is a further opportunity to help ensure you are fully equipped for statutory Health Education.

This will be a day for professionals to hear from leading experts on the latest research on alcohol and drugs prevention, attend a choice of workshops on evidence-based programmes, and receive planning and evaluation advice for effective PSHE. You can find out more and book your place.

We take your privacy and the protection of your personal data seriously

You recently ordered or were given some resources from the Alcohol Education Trust and we need to keep you up to date with any changes to our resources and other relevant updates as you have a professional interest in keeping young people safe around alcohol.

Here at the Alcohol Education Trust, we take your privacy seriously, and will only use your personal information to send you our Teacher Newsletters, resource updates, details about our training events and other relevant mailings with the intention of keeping you updated on developments within the charity and on matters relating to alcohol education.

We will not share your data with other third parties and you can unsubscribe at any time by contacting us at info@alcoholeducationtrust.org.

Our full Data Protection & Privacy policy is available to view.