The power of a wasted life

The Government's decision last week to show schoolchildren a controversial anti-drugs video met with some criticism. But pupils reacted favourably to the 'shock tactics', discovered Mary Braid

No school is safe," says Peter Walker, the head teacher of The Abbey secondary school in the market town of Faversham in leafy Kent. Walker is arguing that every school needs a drugs policy, no matter how rustic or remote the setting, because drugs are everywhere.

His own town illustrates the point. Nestling between the Downs and Kent marshes, Faversham seems the polar opposite of that stereotypical heroin addicts' breeding ground – the drab, hopeless inner-city estate. But drugs are available in this town, just as they are in isolated former pit villages in south Yorkshire and distant Scottish fishing towns. Four years ago, the mothers of three young male addicts in Faversham began a campaign that exposed the drift of heroin into the town's marginalised housing estates. That led The Sun newspaper, in its inimitable style, to nickname historic Faversham the Brown Town. It also led to the opening, this year, of Faversham's first drug centre.

Not that Walker, who served for more than a decade on a government drugs advisory body, needed to be forced to recognise the problem. Just look at the surveys, he says; almost half of Kent youngsters have tried some kind of drug by the age of 15.

However, Walker is sceptical about the latest anti-drugs tool being offered to every school in the country, amid much hype and screaming headlines, by the Department of Education and Skills. He has agreed to show the controversial video, Rachel's Story – piloted in just one school, in rural Herefordshire – to 30 15-year-old pupils. But its "shock tactics" tag has made him dubious about its usefulness. As far as drugs education is concerned, Walker isn't a fan of shock tactics.

The teenage pupils already know of Rachel Whitear, 21, who last year lay dead for two days in an Exmouth flat after overdosing on heroin. Her parents allowed harrowing photographs of her bloated body, bent over her last hit, to be released to the media in the hope of discouraging other children from shooting up. Those images are now on a videotape, which was the centre-piece of a "tougher" drugs strategy announced last week by the DfES, and which also included longer sentences for those who deal outside school gates and automatic expulsion for kids who deal at school. Education minister Ivan Lewis demanded a stronger moral message in school anti-drugs policies; drugs information should not be presented as "value-free".

It is hard not to be cynical about the timing. The initiative came the day before a radical Home Affairs Select Committee report that concluded the government's existing drugs policy was not working. Whatever the politics, Rachel's Story is now available to the nation's schools, with the suggestion that children as young as 10 should see it. Despite his misgivings, Walker loads up the machine, and settles back to watch his pupils' reaction.

And the reaction is pretty stunning. Throughout the 22-minute "true story of Rachel Whitear", the 15-year-olds are absolutely silent. Most actually lean towards the television, completely absorbed in Rachel's story. While watching, it is hard not to conclude that seldom has so much nonsense been written about something so few have actually seen.

For the video's "shock tactics" tag is entirely misleading. Only seconds of it are dedicated to the state in which Rachel was found, three years after she started taking heroin. The rest of the video is dedicated to building up a picture of Rachel, first at her piano-playing, 10-GCSEs peak, and later in gradual, insidious decline, through the memories of her parents – Pauline and Mick Holcroft – her sister, Sarah and her best friend, Polly North. It is the time devoted to getting to know Rachel that gives the few awful frames of her body their context and emotional punch.

The Kent classroom is silent when the video finishes. Jim Rogers, head of sixth form at Lady Hawkins School in Rington, Herefordshire – where the video was piloted in September – got the same reaction from pupils. "There was silence at the end," he says. "The kids were stunned by it."

Afterwards the discussion leads the classroom to talk of peer-group pressure, one of the most important influences in their lives. "She had her whole life ahead of her," says Abbey pupil, Davina Patel. "What a waste." Interestingly, the kids don't focus on the death scene. Most seem preoccupied with Rachel's waste of her own life, and the pain that caused her parents and friends. Claire Ferneyhough even says she thinks Rachel was selfish. Blame? Most seem to accept the Holcrofts' line that Rachel was led astray by an older, heroin-addicted boyfriend. "The boyfriend must have influenced her," says Jodie Fergusson. Walker, more impressed with the video than he expected to be, asks if Rachel did not have her own choices to make.

There is a clear sense of connection going on. The class thinks Rachel is like them. For Stacie Kimber, the video's main message is that heroin addiction can happen to anyone. "Even the perfect girl," she says. "Like Rachel's friend says, she thought it just happened to people living on the street." Walker asks if they think the video is useful? Emily Wren says she doesn't expect to think of it that night when she's watching telly, but thinks she will file it away as a mental red light for the right situation. "I like to think I would never do it, but when there is pressure and other people, you never know," says Stacie Kimber. It is a mature point of view that recognises that life might not always be easy.

Walker asks the class whether he should show it to more pupils. Everyone thinks it should be shown right down the school, though, interestingly, not to sixth-formers. The pupils' view is this kind of message comes too late at 18.

How many pupils know heroin addicts? Three hands go up. Two girls say they know young local women with children, hooked on the drug. If the statistics are anything to go by, half the teenagers in the year group have at least smoked cannabis. But this class, in public at least, disapproves of the government's softer line on cannabis, and complains about the confusion it has caused. Some pupils think dope is already legal; a misapprehension Walker nips quickly in the bud.

The DfES has now decreed that there should be automatic expulsion for kids who deal drugs – including cannabis – in school. Walker, like many head teachers, already follows that zero-tolerance line. And yet out there in the big adult world, the Home Affairs Select Committee's report has just suggested a new offence be created of "supply for gain", so that those who "socially" supply a few friends can be treated more leniently. "The mixed message is confusing to kids," says Lesley Temple, Abbey School's chair of governors.

According to the drugs-education charity Drugscope, Rachel Whitear's parents are upset about the way the video has been used to polarise the debate between moral and value-free education. Walker's drugs policy "balances" information and morality. David Hart, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, says that whatever the DfES says, that approach is the norm. "I don't know of a school that operates a drugs policy without a value element," he says.

So what was last week's initiative all about? Hart suggests that the Department was worried that it might be criticised in the Select Committee report, and so rushed out the draft guidance on exclusions. "They may have thought they were about to be accused of not having a clear, coherent drugs policy," says Hart. The trouble, he says, is that the DfES does not have a "clear, coherent, all-encompassing" policy on exclusions – of which drugs exclusions are a part. He points out that the Department is now saying that all children who deal must be expelled – whatever the class of the drug – but nothing about whether a child who is caught in possession of a Class A drug such as heroin ought to be expelled.

The initiative rushed out last week was also driven by a desire to convince voters that the Government is taking a hard line on drugs, says Hart. A spokesman for Drugscope argues the DfES initiative was more about political posturing that policy U-turn. "We don't think they are trying to return to a 'Just say No' approach, because they know that preaching does not work."

Hart also thinks the announcement about harder sentences for school-gate dealers rather odd. "They would just move 300 yards down the road," he says. The DfES seemed to receive a quick slap on the wrist over this "initiative" when the Home Office said it had looked at the issue and found courts already giving heavier sentences to dealers who sold to children.

Last week's initiative might make you think that schools were full of users and plagued by dealers hanging round the gates. In fact only a tiny proportion of drugs – 3 per cent in Kent – are taken or supplied in school. Peter Walker does not shirk his head teacher's responsibilities, but suggests that when 46 per cent of users say that their preferred drug-taking environment is home, it is parents who are really in dire need of education.

education@independent.co.uk