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Dr Farah Jamal's death at the age of 30 is a tragic loss for public health research. Despite her youth, she made significant scientific contributions in understanding how to improve young people's health and well-being, and through developing new methods that will help other researchers in the future. All her research was united by a concern for using sociological ideas to inform public health research, as well as a commitment to involving young people and listening to their views and ideas. Through her qualitative research1 ,2 and evidence synthesis3 ,4 examining how schools influence young people's health risk behaviours, Farah was able to go beyond more simplistic studies of ‘school effects’ on health by applying a sociological imagination that we and others could not. Through starting from the perspective of young people themselves, this work has established that to understand school effects we need …

Background Bullying and cyberbullying are common phenomena in schools and can have a significant impact on the health and mental health of those involved in such behaviours, both as victims and as bullies. This study aims to investigate student-level and school-level characteristics of those who become involved in bullying and cyberbullying behaviours. Methods We used data from 6667 year-8 students from the baseline survey of a cluster randomised trial in 40 English schools. We ran multilevel models to examine associations of bullying outcomes with individual-level variables (sex, ethnicity, family composition and family socioeconomic status) and school-level variables (school-level deprivation; school type; size of student population; school sex composition (mixed or single sex school) and measures of school quality. Results 32% of boys and 38% of girls report significant bullying victimisation, and cyberbullying victimisation was reported by 2% of boys and 4.5% of girls, with fewer (1% of boys and 0.5% of girls) reporting being cyberbullies. At the individual level, low socioeconomic status was associated with higher risk of reporting being a cyberbullying victim or perpetrator. Having a single parent was associated with increased risk of reporting being a victim of bullying or cyberbullying but not of reporting being a cyberbullying perpetrator. Being female was a risk factor for reporting being a victim of bullying or cyberbullying and a protective factor against reporting being a perpetrator of cyberbullying. At the school level, school type and school quality measures were associated with bullying risk: compared with students in converter academies mainstream, students in voluntary-aided schools were less likely to report being bullied. Students in community and foundation schools were more likely to report being perpetrators of cyberbullying. A school quality rating of “good” was associated with greater reported bullying victimisation compared to ratings of “excellent”. Discussion These results suggest that bullying and cyberbullying prevalence varies across school type and school quality, supporting the hypothesis that organisational/management factors within the school may have an impact on students’ behaviour. These preliminary findings will pave the way for future research investigating in detail what are the school factors and processes that promote/prevent bullying and cyberbullying behaviours.

Education policy shouldn’t focus solely on academic attainment Education policy in England increasingly encourages schools to maximise students’ academic attainment and ignore their broader wellbeing, personal development, and health.1 Schools are now monitored on attainment in a narrow range of academic subjects. Participation in the National Healthy Schools Programme no longer benefits from governmental targets or funding. Ofsted reports no longer focus specifically on how well schools promote students’ health or personal development.2 Personal, social, and health education (PSHE) remains a non-statutory subject, and schools spend less and less time teaching it because of pressure to focus on academic subjects.3 The government recently proposed making the early years foundation stage profile—which offers a holistic view of the child including his or her personal, social, and emotional development—non-statutory. At the same time, it wants to introduce mandatory academic tests in the first year of primary school.4 Two ideas apparently underpin these developments. Firstly, that promoting attainment, on the one hand, and health and …

Background Secondary schools are increasingly subject to quasi-markets in the UK, Europe and North America, typified by: diversity of school types; parents choosing where to apply; and government publishing school performance data. There is a paucity of research examining these policies potential for harming young people9s health. Aim To develop a logic-model of mechanisms by which market-oriented education policies might influence students9 health. Methods Qualitative case-study research conducted in seven secondary-schools in London and south-east England between 2006 and 2010. Data collected via semi-structured interviews with students aged 11–16 (N=103), school leadership team members (N=12), classroom teachers (N=23) and non-teaching staff (N=4), and observations. Techniques associated with thematic content analysis and grounded theory were used to analyse the data. Results Parental ‘choice’ of secondary-school, and complex admission policies, were associated with the dispersal of students9 friendship groups when transitioning from primary to secondary school, with consequent loss of social support and emotional harms. Greater ‘choice’ was also implicated in some schools being regarded as ‘dumping-grounds’ for socially-disadvantaged students and potentially violent, intimidating environments in which students engaged in risk-behaviours such as drug use and violence to develop protective bonds with peers. All case-study schools were strongly focused on academic attainment due to the emphasis on this from the national school inspectorate and in performance ‘league-tables’. Some schools sought to improve their league-table position by targeting resources on ‘key-marginal’ students on the threshold of achieving five exam passes, the key performance metric. Less academic students could become disaffected, engaging in smoking, drinking and other risk-behaviours as alternative markers of status and bonding, and with fewer reasons to avoid early parenting. The exam-focused environment also aroused anxiety among both high- and low-attainers, some of whom used drugs and solvents as self-medication. Schools also give low priority to any non-academic activities such as health education and sport in this performance-driven context. Conclusion Secondary schools may now be key sites for the production of health-risk and emotional harms, and by which health inequalities are reproduced. We propose a logic-model to guide further research illustrating how, via the above pathways, market reforms might encourage increased violence, substance use, teenage pregnancy, physical inactivity, poorer mental health and health inequalities.