Safe Night Out: keeping our students safe…

As we frolic from formal season to the festive season, schoolies week and other school and social events where students actively celebrate their end of year academic achievements, a new curriculum has been introduced to attempt to educate year 12 students about the dangers of alcohol and illegal drug use.

The Alcohol and Other Drugs education program, which arises out of the government’s Safe Night Out strategy, is being trialled in a number of secondary schools.

It includes a suite of teacher guidelines and resources from years 7 to 12. The years 7 to 10 programs are aligned to the Australian Curriculum health and physical education focus area of “alcohol and other drugs”. The years 11 and 12 programs are designed to be delivered as stand-alone pastoral care programs. External experts within the alcohol and other drug education field were consulted during the developmental process to provide research and best-practice educational approaches.

Teacher guidelines and resources for years 11 and 12 were available from the start of term 4, with the years 7 to 10 programs becoming available for the start of term 1, 2015 via the Learning Place. Visit http://education.qld.gov.au/curriculum/safe-night-out/index.html for more information and links to the resources.

The QTU strongly supports the introduction of this suite of teaching resources and is interested in hearing from members keen to provide feedback on the resources. Like any other new department initiative, teachers should be given time during working hours to enable them to become familiar with the content of the new curriculum.
For further information please contact me.

Leah Mertens
Research Officer – Professional Issues

Queensland Teachers' Journal, Vol 119 No 8, 14 November 2014, p6