Under an amendment to the Tobacco Act, all school grounds must be completely smoke-free as of 1 August 2020, but not all school leaders appear to be planning this. Reasons cited include not wanting to impose a smoking ban on staff, and the expectation that students will not stop smoking but will smoke outside the school grounds, meaning that the school can no longer supervise them.
For the study, school leaders in primary education, secondary education and secondary vocational education (MBO) were surveyed by means of an online questionnaire, and seven additional interviews were conducted with school leaders of MBO institutions that are partially smoke-free.
Other important findings include:
- More and more school leaders are aware of the amendment to the Tobacco Act (78%), but not all of them are yet.
- The main motivations for school leaders to create completely smoke-free school grounds are that they believe it is the school's responsibility to provide a healthy learning environment, that they want to set a good example and that discouraging smoking is in line with national policy.
- School leaders of completely smoke-free schools have generally not received support from an external organisation in achieving this.
- A majority of school leaders of non-smoking-free or partially smoke-free schools do not need support in making the school grounds smoke-free.
- Making the school grounds completely smoke-free (if this is not yet the case) is a priority to some extent for 37 percent of primary schools, 45 percent of secondary schools and 64 percent of secondary vocational education schools.
Read here the infographic On the way to smoke-free school grounds for the main results.
Read here the report On the way to smoke-free school grounds.