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2.4 Strengths and weaknesses of peer education

Some of the literature points to the difficulties of evaluating peer education. Mellanby et al ¹³ found:

The identified studies indicated that peer leaders were at least as, or more, effective than adults. Although this suggests that peer-led programmes can be effective, methodological difficulties and analytical problems indicate that this is not an easy area to investigate, and research so far has not provided a definitive answer.

Little research had been carried out as to whether peer educators were more effective than adult educators were. Only one relevant study was identified and its findings were that both adult and peer educators had unique strengths but that neither group was comprehensively better at educating than the other was.

2.4.1 Perceived strengths

A review of peer-led sex education ¹⁴ found that peers were an important influence on young people's health behaviours, and were considered credible role models and disseminators of social information. Fennell ¹⁵ found that young people had been used to deliver a number of health promotion activities. The Social Exclusion Unit in England recommended peer led approaches for delivering sex education in schools. ¹⁶

Some attempts to evaluate peer education initiatives have differentiated between the impact of the programme on the peer educators themselves and the impact on their targets. Parkin and McKegany ¹⁷ summarised a number of initiatives that have noted changes in the behaviour and attitudes of the peer educators. Participating as a peer educator was found to increase the educators' self-esteem and self-confidence, and to improve their communication skills. However, the authors identified the need to develop a model of peer education evaluation that could identify effectiveness of peer education in the short, medium and long term.

Advocates for Youth, an organisation based in the United States researched the impact of peer education:

Research suggests that people are more likely to hear and personalise messages, and thus to change their attitudes and behaviours, if they believe the messenger is similar to them and faces the same concerns and pressures. Peer education draws on the credibility that young people have with their peers, leverages the power of role modelling, and provides flexibility in meeting the diverse needs of today's youth ¹⁸

Within schools, peer education was found to have the potential to change the relationship between teachers and pupils. The National Children's Bureau reported that:

The relationship between teachers and peer educators is often much improved by the [peer education] experience. Teachers respect the peer educators for taking it on, and both get to see the other side of the coin ¹⁹.

Few studies have compared the effectiveness of different forms of delivering the same programme. Two comparisons (Jemmott ²⁰ and Mellanby ²¹) of peer-led and adult-led education found that both adult and peer led education had an important place in effective sex and relationships education. Peer leaders were found to be more effective at establishing conservative norms and attitudes to sexual behaviour than adults. Peer educators were found to be less effective at imparting factual information and involving students in classroom activities. Both of these studies focused on health and relationship education, but there is no evidence that the findings could be transferred to an area such as road safety education.

Local authority Advisers who were interviewed set out the following benefits of peer education:

• It helped the youngsters trained as peer educators to develop confidence. This would support pupils in work on citizenship, and provide skills and provide opportunities for growth.
• Youngsters at receiving end had a wider knowledge base from which to tackle problems.
• Teaching staff found it helpful particularly in areas that they were unsure about, as peer educators might helped them to build their own knowledge.

Within the schools taking part in case studies, teaching staff provided a review of the perceived strengths of peer education. These were:

• Pupils developing in confidence and maturity.
• Development of pupil awareness of risk and unsafe behaviours that were transferable to other areas.
• Peer educators becoming equipped to deal with the negative influences of peer pressure.
• Competition of pupils to become peer educators meant that pupils of a wide range of abilities and backgrounds were included. This worked where teachers, rather than selecting only the brightest and most popular children as peer educators, selected children from different social backgrounds and the cohort represented pupils with varying academic abilities.
• Empowerment of pupils who took part as buddies, some of whom had had learning or behavioural problems of their own.
• A means for the peer educators themselves of developing important skills in an alternative to the formal curriculum.
• A means of reducing stress on younger pupils and helping improve their learning environment.
• Pupils learn most by teaching, so peer education was good for the pupil educators.
• 'Learners' often have more in common with peer educators and are willing to discuss with, and learn from, people nearer their own age.
• There were credibility advantages with peers (as long as the person was credible to other pupils).
• A broad recruitment base enabled pupils to recognise perhaps unsuspected strengths in dealing with others.
• Peer education could benefit teachers who may not have been able to interact with some of their pupils in the way that best suited those pupils.
• Peer education could provide support to pupils with behavioural or learning problems who saw their peer educators as positive role models.
• Pupils who were being taught by older pupils seemed to pay more attention to what their peer educators were saying than they did to what teachers said.

Both the literature review and anecdotal sources identified greater benefits to the educators than could be claimed for the target groups of the education process.

2.4.2 Perceived weaknesses

In the schools where peer education was practised, and where interviewees had spoken positively of the strengths of peer education, problems were seen to centre round administrative issues. The Assistant Rector of the school where the peer education scheme was administered by an outside agency recognised that running a similar peer education programme without the external support that they had would be very hard. She believed that schools would not have time to develop such a scheme, with its training and support requirements.

In another school, any weaknesses were believed to centre on sustainability and organisational problems. Interviewees in School B felt that administrative issues would involve additional timetabling, as it would be necessary to make sure peer educators were available and that peer education demands did not interfere with their studies. In addition, this school felt that supervision by teaching staff, required to support peer education schemes, ate into teachers' time.

Other concerns to do with peer education included a lack of continuity that might be caused by senior pupils on exam leave, and the fact that there might be inconsistencies between the ways in which peer education was carried out by different pupils in the school. The fact that peer education was a voluntary programme also meant that educators' time might be committed elsewhere.

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