2.5 The viability of peer education in secondary schools
The sections above have explored current understandings and applications of peer education, and summarised the strengths and weaknesses of peer education approaches. Before moving on to explore possible applications of peer education in road safety, it is worthwhile comparing the effectiveness of peer education with other methods of educating secondary pupils.
Findings from the research so far indicate that peer education is demanding of teachers' and other trainers' time, that its effectiveness is hard to evaluate, and that where it has been evaluated, greater benefits are found to accrue to the educators than to the target group.
Setting up peer education schemes requires planning, training of educators and support for all participants. The sustainability of such schemes would require continued input and monitoring along the lines set out in Section 2.3 above. Peer education is labour intensive
The value of a peer education scheme would depend on the extent to which it could improve an existing education programme or introduce an element of education where none already existed.
Both the Forth Valley Health Project referred to above, and two comparisons (Jemmott 22 and Mellanby 23) 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, but that neither could be said to be better than the other.