This scoping review provides an overview of COVID-19 approaches to managing unanticipated school closures and available literature related to young people learning outside-of-school. A range of material has been drawn upon to highlight educational issues of this learning context, including psychosocial and emotional repercussions. Globally, while some countries opted for a mass school shut-down, many schools remained open for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. This partial closure not only enabled learning in smaller targeted groups but also offered a safe sanctuary for those who needed a regulated and secure environment. In Australia, if full school closures were to be enforced over a long period, a significant proportion of students from more vulnerable backgrounds would likely experience persistent disadvantage through a range of barriers: long-term educational disengagement, digital exclusion, poor technology management, and increased psychosocial challenges. This scoping review combines research on technology availability and learning, with analysis of the long-term educational impacts of navigating the COVID-19 disruption.

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PurposeThe Mentally Healthy Schools Framework (MHSF), based on the population-wide Act-Belong-Commit mental health promotion campaign, is a whole-school approach primarily targeting student mental health, but it is also intended for staff. This paper presents the results of an impact survey on staff after the implementation of the Framework in a number of schools in Western Australia.Design/methodology/approachA baseline questionnaire was completed by n = 87 staff at schools that had just signed up to the programme, and a participant questionnaire was completed by n = 146 staff at schools that had been participating for at least 17 months.FindingsThe results show that the Framework has had a substantial impact on many staff in terms of increased mental health literacy and taking action to improve their mental health.Originality/valueMental health interventions in schools generally focus on students' well-being and how to deal with student mental health problems. There are few comprehensive interventions that also include staff well-being.

While there has been increased attention worldwide on mental health promotion over the past two decades, what is lacking in many countries around the globe is practical knowledge of what constitutes a population-wide mental health promotion campaign, and how such a campaign can be implemented. This paper provides such knowledge based on the development, implementation and evaluation of the Act-Belong-Commit campaign, the world’s first comprehensive population-wide public mental health promotion campaign which was launched in 2008 in Western Australia. Given the learnings from the full-scale implementation and evaluation of the campaign in Western Australia and its expansion nationally and internationally, along with the continuing and expanding evidence base for the campaign constructs, we crystallise 21 reasons why jurisdictions who wish to achieve the goals of the WHO and adopt the recommendations of the European framework on mental health and wellbeing should consider adopting or adapting Act-Belong-Commit when considering implementing a public mental health promotion campaign.

Purpose: To describe simultaneous within-person change in adolescent binge drinking, sensation seeking and risky peer affiliation for adolescents in sport across grades 8-10. Methods: Longitudinal data from 502 adolescent sport participants were analyzed. A multivariate growth curve model tracked early levels and concurrent change in binge drinking, sensation seeking, and risky peers in sports across three years. Results: Findings revealed that early levels of sensation seeking and risky peers in sport were positively and significantly associated with early levels of binge drinking. Further, early high levels of sensation seeking predicted increases in risky peer associations and binge drinking. Importantly, developmental increases in risky peer associations paralleled developmental increases in binge drinking, even after accounting for development of sensation seeking. Conclusions: It is important to identify factors that place adolescents at increased risk for escalations in binge drinking, especially within settings known to be problematic. Sensation seeking is a particularly potent driver of adolescent binge drinking within the extracurricular sport context. Further, accelerations in binge drinking travel hand-in-hand with affiliating with risky peers in sport.