Approximately 25--30 per cent of operational time in the School Dental Programme is assigned to dental health education, representing a sizeable investment of public resources. If the full potential of dental health education is to be realized, the respective effectiveness of various dental health education activities need to be identified so that the more effective activities can be emphasized and developed further. As an essential prerequisite there is a need to refine the evaluation process by introducing: (1) improved dental indices; (2) improved methods of classifying and maintaining records of the dental health education activities undertaken; (3) better methods of quantifying dental care items and other social and environmental covariables; and (4) more sophisticated forms of multivariate analysis.