Schools tackle sex and drugs culture

The party is over for pupils, writes Bess Twiston Davies
PARENTS OF BOYS at a leading Catholic public school have been warned that drugs and sex are rife at =chaperoned teenage parties.
Downside School in Somerset sent a strongly-worded letter to parents at the start of the Easter holidays.
Marked "confidential", it warns parents that drug. taking and casual sex are commonplace.
"We regard a party for young people as acceptable only if parents are going to be present. If parents are not present, drugs will be," writes Mr Martin Fisher, the school's Deputy Headmaster.
"If you yourself are giving a party for your son you should not feel pressurised to organise the kind of thing which involves semi-darkness, so that the guests cannot properly see each other, and music so loud that they cannot speak," advises Mr Fisher.
He describes these occasions as "simply a junior version of rave parties" which incite "frenentic behaviour and casual sexual encounters".
Fr Antony Sutch OSB, the Headmaster of Downside, said: "This is what everyone should be doing. Schools and parents have got to work together."
The letter was produced in response to parental concerns about how much freedom to give adolescent boys.
It urges parents and teachers to agree a common code of behaviour for teenagers: "We do not believe that standards of behaviour are to be decided by television presenters, writers in magazines, musicians, producers of soap operas, makers of videos or people with an interest in selling alcohol or other goods," it states.
"Standards of behaviour have to be set by parents and teachers as a group sticking together and deciding what they expect."
Some sixth formers at 300-pupil Downside were incensed by the letter.
"A lot of us don't feel it is the school's position to tell us how to behave out of school, or to tell our parents not to trust us," complained one Downside sixth former.
But sources at the school indicated that the letter was intended to target a small minority of problem pupils rather than the majority of Downside boys.
Contact between parents and teaching staff at Catholic boarding schools over extracurricular activities is common. Fr Leo Chamberlain OSB, Headmaster of Ampleforth College in Yorkshire, said: "Ampleforth is in constant touch with parents to ensure that guidance on moral and social behaviour is seemless between the home and the school."