Schools evaluation

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MAV Schools

We take frontline clinicians into schools across Scotland delivering our unique violence reduction education.

We rely on the feedback from pupils, parents, teachers and our clinical volunteers to continually improve our schools programme, ensuring it is relevant, evidence-based and appropriate.

We are always keen to continue improving our input and rely on Scottish health and crime data to meet specified learning outcomes, mapped against the national curriculum.

What do the young people say?

"The video was actually quite life changing once you’ve seen what can happen when a fight starts like and it shows you it showed you what would happen if you had tae use a knife it can end up getting you in jail and it’d ruin the rest of your life"

"I think that especially nowadays how young people start drinking a lot younger so they need to be more careful when they’re like going and where they’re going and who they’re with"

"I think talking to the doctors helped as well cause like they’ve seen casualties first-hand what can happen to someone if they’re stabbed or someone’s carrying a knife so it’s kinda good to see their perspective on it cause they’ve actually seen first-hand how it happens and what happens"

What do our volunteers say?

“It’s very much a camaraderie all sort of working towards the same goal and because we’re all volunteers we all feel part of a team”

“We get huge amounts of violence in when I’m on-call on a Saturday morning usually most of the morning and most of the day we're doing trauma cases which are almost always violence and alcohol related"

"I've seen devastating consequences of knife crime working in Emergency Medicine, in this role often feel like I'm mopping up the effects of problems in society, so I'm keen to be involved in trying to address these problems”

"As a psychiatrist I get to deal with the you know the ripples there after the peripheral people the families that are affected and the lives you know whether it’s post traumatic stress disorder you know whether it’s depression or whether it’s children growing up without a father "

“I think if we can stop one person getting killed or one person having their life altered out of all recognition because they serve a lengthy jail sentence that is worthwhile”

“As an A&E nurse and a primary teacher I am only too aware of the effects of gangs and knife crime and indeed how the youth of today think and act. It is with this knowledge that I felt I may be able to help supply the children with the necessary knowledge to enable them to make informed choices”

Project Evidence

University of St Andrews

In 2013, the University of St Andrews externally evaluated the MAV Schools programme in mixed methods study led by Dr Anna Gavine. The conclusion of the evaluation was that 'MAV has been successful in engaging young people and increasing their awareness of the dangers associated with violence and strategies for staying safe’ The study also evidenced some improvement in pupils' attitudes towards violent behaviour although it should be noted that most pupils did not initially hold pro-violent attitudes. Focus groups showed an increase in pupils' empathy for victims of violence and that pupils really valued the delivery of lessons on this topic by clinicans.

We have subsequently used the recommendations from the evaluation to improve our programme and continue to measure and adapt it.

Read the full 2013 Report

Prevention is better than cure.

MAV Schools