Recent development in health educations in schools in Northern Ireland.

FOR many years teachers in both primary and secondary schools have been making their contribution to the health education of their pupils. In the primary schools this has largely been in the context of the general curriculum and in secondary schools as relevant application of the subject matter in particular subject areas, such as home economics, biology and physical education. Generally this has been done at an individual level, with teachers being given very little guidance and, in most cases, being unaware of what others were doing in this field. In England the Department of Education and Science (DES) published a handbook (1968), and more recently a curriculum paper on health education has been produced in Scotland (Scottish Education Department, 1974). Apart from the circulation to schools of a very occasional document on a specific aspect such as Drugs and the Schools about 1972 (DES, undated), the Ministry or Department of Education in Northern Ireland appear to have given no guidance on the matter. Two surveys of the current practice of health education were carried out in English counties-Buckinghamshire (Myatt, 1971) and Staffordshire (Head, 1973), and an enquiry into the factual knowledge of certain aspects of health by students entering teacher training colleges in England was reported in 1972 (Rout and Painter). In Northern Ireland the only contributions to the subject between 1966 and 1974 appear to be an unpublished dissertation on the provision of sex education in schools (Taylor, 1967), a report on health education in the Government training centres in County Antrim (McNarry, 1972), and an article on the place of health studies in the training of graduate teachers (Tracey, 1969).