Education: introduction

A good education has long been recognised as one of the important foundations in life; facilitating future employment and providing access to a fulfilling adult life. In health terms, education is often described as a 'determinant' of health and is recognised as having an important role in shaping lifelong health. Education is viewed by many as a resource that, apart from providing qualifications, can potentially have a much broader beneficial impact on health and well-being in terms of developing values, emotional intelligence, self esteem and social functioning skills.

Relative educational attainment is often observed as a determinant of health inequality and is used along with health status measures to describe the social gradient in health. The Black Report (1988) noted that social and economic factors like income, work (or lack of it), environment, education, housing, transport and what are today called 'life-styles' all affect health and all favour the better-off.

The WHO report The Solid Facts – Social Determinants of Health (2003) summarises that the effects of parental poverty can lead to a chain of social risk beginning in childhood - "reduced readiness for and acceptance of school, goes on to poor behaviour and attainment at school, and leads to raised risk of unemployment, perceived social marginality and to low-status, low control jobs in adult life. This pattern of poor education and employment damages health and, ultimately, cognitive functioning in old age." It also notes that "education" is associated with raised health awareness, and improved self-care".

This section of the web site deals with education principally as a determinant of health, rather than focussing on health education. However information on levels of health knowledge, awareness and attitudes to health related behaviour are provided by two Scottish surveys: Health Education Population Survey (HEPS) and Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) survey. Further details of these surveys are provided in the section on key data sources.

The data pages provide examples of data on educational attainment, participation in education and free school meals entitlement, while the key data sources section provides links to web sites that hold education related data.