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The purpose of this paper is to review two school intervention projects aiming to promote students' self‐efficacy in Germany. Self‐efficacy, defined as people's “beliefs in their capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments”, is a core prevention criterion of mental health. It is positively connected to important facets of personality (e.g. motivational orientation, social competencies) as well as to health‐related situation‐specific behaviour (e.g. coping with stress, conflict solving).

Two intervention projects, “Self‐efficacious Schools – SESC” and “Fostering Self‐efficacy and Self‐Determination in class – FOSS”, made teachers familiar with the concept of self‐efficacy to enable them to develop and adapt intra‐curricular promotion measures of students' school self‐efficacy and social self‐efficacy.

Individualisation of task demands and performance feedback as well as a high transparency of teachers' demands and evaluation criteria are beneficial for students' school self‐efficacy. Social self‐efficacy is enhanced by establishing a positive class climate, where students support each other and teachers are sensitive to the individual needs of their students.

Both FOSS and SESC are multi‐component non‐randomised controlled studies. Thus, future research is needed focusing on the different measures separately using RCT‐designs.

The actual implementation of promoting strategies into school lessons is the decisive step of strengthening students' mental health at school. As a consequence, promotion measures have to be embedded into organizational structures which can motivate teachers to learn and implement innovation even under unfavourable conditions.

In contrast to extracurricular activities, there has been limited research on the implementation and evaluation of prevention activities continuously integrated into the mainstream school curriculum and normal lessons.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the health‐promoting and stigma‐reducing effect of the German school‐based programme “Crazy? So what!”.

A quasi‐experimental longitudinal control‐study was carried out with assessments one week prior to the school programme, immediately after it and three months later. A total of 210 Year 9 and 10 students (aged 13‐18 years) were surveyed in four schools in Saxony, Germany. Data analysis was done descriptively based on frequency distributions. Random effects regression models for unbalanced panel data were used to estimate the change of the outcome variables over time.

At baseline, only 5.2 per cent of the intervention group would talk with their teacher about a mental health problem. Immediately after the programme, this number increased to 10.6 per cent and after three months to 17.9 per cent. There was also a positive, short‐term effect on students' social distance, i.e. an increase in positive attitudes towards those with a mental illness, but this was not sustained over time. By contrast, self‐efficacy proved resistant to change.

This school programme is successful in that the “experts on their own behalf” (young people, who have gone through mental illness) were able to encourage and reassure others on how to face a mental health crisis with more confidence, which also contributes to strengthening students' resilience. The results of this study indicate the importance of sensitising children and youth, but also teachers and other adults to mental health.

This paper should give an idea of the slow but irreversible introduction process of personal computers into social work services and agencies, but its major part shall deal with social schools' response to this challenge. The author's college/curriculum shall be used as an example.

WE have to announce with deep regret the death of Mr. I. Chalkley Gould, founder and director of the Library World since its establishment in 1898. Mr. Gould was a member of an old Essex family associated with Loughton and its neighbourhood, and was born in 1844, his father being the late George Gould, of Traps Hill House, Loughton. His connection with the firm of Marlborough, Gould & Co. and other stationery and printing concerns led him many years ago to give some attention to library and museum work, towards which he had always been attracted because of his personal interest in archaeology and literature. In this way he became associated with many museums, libraries and antiquarian societies, and identified himself more particularly with the movement for the preservation of ancient British earthworks. He was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, vice‐president of the Essex Archaeological Society, the Essex Field Club, and the British Archaeological Association. Within recent years he acted as hon. secretary of the Committee for Recording Ancient Earthworks and Fortified Enclosures—a committee for the formation of which he was largely responsible and in the work of which he took a very deep interest. He was chairman of the Committee for the Exploration of the Red Hills of Essex—an important undertaking which is not yet completed. He also contributed several valuable papers to the Victoria History of Essex, and assisted the editor of that publication in revising the earthworks sections of other counties.