Pilot study: effective health and personal development. An experiment in school education

This paper describes an experimental school-based health education and personal development programme conducted jointly by the Health Commission and Department of Education in northern Sydney, New South Wales. We evaluated the programme after it had been taught for five school terms, by adopting a control/experimental group design based on multiple choice questionnaires. We recorded large and significant gains in the health status of the secondary students from the experimental schools compared with the control students. Notable successes were in the areas of cigarette smoking (reductions as high as 13%), alcohol consumption (reductions of up to 12%) and exercise (increase of 17.5%). The long-term effectiveness of such programmes may depend on support from the medical profession.