In July 2003 Tacade, a leading not-for-profit charitable organisation working in the field of personal, social, health and citizenship education for children and young people was funded by Diageo Great Britain to work with four secondary schools in England and Wales to pilot a project that aims to enhance young people’s knowledge and understanding of alcohol related issues. It provides opportunities to explore attitudes and values associated with alcohol in society and develop effective models of alcohol peer education. The work with these four pilot schools – in Cardiff, Melbourn, Leicester and London - was informed by a review of relevant literature and a scoping activity to identify existing examples of alcohol peer alcohol education work with young people. The substantive work with schools began in January 2004 and much of the peer educator’s work continued into the Autumn term (2004). An evaluation of the work was carried out by an Independent Evaluator.

The project has been recently extended to work with schools in Manchester, Portsmouth, Salford and West Sussex. A further briefing paper and peer alcohol education toolkit for schools will be published by Tacade in 2005.