Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment his Department has made of whether gambling advertising is a predictor of at risk and problem gambling in secondary school children.

The department have made relationships education compulsory for all primary school pupils, relationships and sex education (RSE) compulsory for all secondary school pupils and health education compulsory for all pupils in state-funded schools from September 2020. Health education includes teaching pupils about the risks associated with gambling and the statutory guidance is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/relationships-education-relationships-and-sex-education-rse-and-health-education.

Under the topic of internet safety and harms, the guidance sets out that young people should be taught about the risks related to online gambling, including the accumulation of debt, how advertising and information is targeted at them and how to be a discerning consumer of information online.

To support schools to deliver this content, the department has produced teacher training modules that are free to download and can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/teaching-about-relationships-sex-and-health. The ‘internet safety and harms’ module includes a section on gambling which covers how the industry use advertising to target different demographics.

Other curriculum subjects, such as citizenship, mathematics and computing, can also address online gambling and its dangers. This includes developing young people’s financial literacy and highlighting the dangers of online gambling whilst using digital platforms.