‘Wasted Education’: An exploratory study of the development and implementation of drug policy in secondary schools

Abstract

School drug policy is an under explored area, but in the last few years, we have seen schools receive media attention regarding their responses to student drug use, which has highlighted the limited information available to schools when developing and implementing their school drug policies. The current information available to schools from the Ministry of Youth Development (2004) recommends that schools develop their drug policy by employing both youth development and harm reduction approaches. This purpose of this study was to explore how drug policy is developed and implemented in secondary schools in New Zealand. The research uses a qualitative multiple-case study design, with four schools, and three main participant groups in each, namely students, staff and community members. Data collection tools included focus groups, semi-structured interviews and document analysis. The study found that most drug policy in schools articulated a hard-line abstinence statement. However, the responses to drug policy violations often deviated from the policy statement and how the schools responded varied. The findings from this study show that when developing and implementing a drug policy, three characteristics remained important. The three key characteristics identified in this thesis were connectedness, clarity and consistency. Aligned to a socio-ecological model, these characteristic are interrelated and operate across multiple layers (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). The connection characteristic is that the level of involvement participants had in the development and implementation of drug policy was found, on the whole, to be low. This impacted on participants’ sense of connectedness and support for their school’s approach. The second characteristic identified was clarity; in how the drug policy was written and subsequently how this related to the expectations of the participants. The last characteristic is related to how consistently the values from the drug policy were reflected in the responses to young people who violated the school policy. The findings from this study have implications for the alcohol and drug, healthy youth development and education sectors, and overall, the recommendations are to enhance collaborative opportunities for these sectors regarding drug policy. The findings from this study provide valuable insight into school drug policy development and implementation. Furthermore, the findings inform us as to what is needed to enhance how schools may respond to drug policy violations in the future.