Aberdeenshire Life Education Centres (ALEC)

ALEC educators, all experienced teachers, deliver annual workshops to pupils in all Aberdeenshire primary and secondary schools. These memorable life skills sessions are currently delivered in ‘LifeSpace’ an inflatable structure in school, or as ‘SCARF Live Online’ sessions via MS Teams. ALEC takes a three-strand approach, addressing children and young people’s knowledge, skills and attitudes, and programmes are aligned with the Curriculum for Excellence and GIRFEC

Children and young people’s experience of ALEC sessions is fun, engaging and memorable. In primary schools, children meet Harold the Giraffe puppet (‘Healthy Harold’), and friends, have discussions and watch short films about healthy eating, legal and illegal drugs and their effects, the body and how it works, friendships and their influence, and how choices and behaviours can affect children’s health and education outcomes. ALEC’s interventions include challenging social norms – misperceptions of peers’ engagement with risky behaviour – to engender more positive behaviours.

Recognising the role of the community and home life in influencing children’s choices, ALEC also delivers special sessions for parents and carers to amplify effectiveness.

Alongside an ALEC visit, all Aberdeenshire schools have full access to online teacher resources called SCARF (which represents Coram Life Education’s values for children of Safety, Caring, Achievement, Resilience and Friendship). SCARF provides a whole-school approach to building these essential foundations – crucial for children to achieve their best, academically and socially.
SCARF is a framework consisting of lesson plans, online planning, assessment and HGIOS self evaluation tools to give busy teachers skills and confidence to embed a comprehensive Health and Wellbeing programme throughout the primary years.

For more information about ALEC please visit alec.org.uk