Secondary school survey
Last week (17 October 2024) NHS England published its latest survey of secondary school pupils in England in years 7 to 11 (mostly aged 11 to 15), focusing on smoking, drinking and drug use. It covers a range of topics including prevalence, habits, attitudes, and wellbeing.
Smoking, Drinking and Drug Use among Young People in England, 2023 is based on an online survey for the first time. The move online also meant that completion of the survey could be managed through teacher-led sessions, rather than being conducted by external interviewers. For those familiar with this long-running survey, it’s important to note that this latest edition also introduced additional questions relating to pupils wellbeing. These included how often the pupil felt lonely, felt left out and that they had no-one to talk to.
More than 13,000 schoolchildren completed the survey.
Headline findings
The value of these surveys is primarily that they are an excellent way of revealing trends in tobacco, alcohol and drug use among school children. Overall, most patterns of consumption are similar to the previous (2021) iteration, with most significant changes showing a reduction in the use of substances.
Tobacco
The prevalence of smoking cigarettes is similar to the 2021 survey. 11% of pupils had ever smoked (12% in 2021), 3% were current smokers and 1% were regular smokers (both unchanged from 2021).
Vaping
Current e-cigarette use (vaping) remains at 9%, the same as in 2021. 1 in 4 pupils (25%) in the 2023 survey reported having ever tried vaping. Interestingly, 89% of those pupils who have ever tried vaping, have never regularly smoked tobacco cigarettes. A further 6% reported starting vaping before smoking tobacco cigarettes, only 5% of pupils reported smoking tobacco cigarettes before using vapes.
Alcohol
37% of pupils said they had ever had an alcoholic drink. Prevalence increases with age, from 15% of 11 year olds to 62% of 15 year olds. 5% of all pupils said they usually drank alcohol at least once per week, similar to 2021 (6%). The proportion increases with age, from 1% of 11 and 12 year olds to 11% of 15 year olds.
Drugs
There was a significant fall in the prevalence of lifetime illicit drug use. 13% of pupils reported they had ever taken drugs (18% in 2021), 9% had taken drugs in the last year, and 5% in the last month. Interestingly 6% 15 year old boys and 5% of their female counterparts had bought drugs over the internet or from a shop. Focusing on pupils who had taken drugs in the last year, 23% had bought them over the internet and 19% from a shop.
Wellbeing
As previously stated, questions about school children’s wellbeing were introduced for the first time in this survey. 10% of pupils reported feeling lonely often or always. 18% of pupils felt that they often had no-one to talk to, and 15% said that they often felt left out.
Conclusions
While the data is not presented in great detail (although there is a breakdown by age and, sometimes, gender in the attached spreadsheets), NHS England does promise that an anonymised record level file of the underlying data on which users can carry out their own analysis will be made available via the UK Data Service later in 2024 for those who want to dig deeper.
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