The Healthy Schools Programme celebrated its 10th birthday in 2009 and in July 2010, the new coalition government confirmed that Healthy Schools will continue. The Government wants Healthy Schools to provide guidance to schools on the physical and emotional wellbeing of children and young people, recognising that healthy schools plays an important role in helping children and young people reach their full potential. The programme supports the links between health, behaviour and achievement. The programme is about creating healthy and happy children and young people who, as a result, do better in learning and in life.
Its original aims were:
• To support children and young people in developing healthy behaviour
• To help to raise pupil achievement
• To help to reduce health inequalities
• To help promote social inclusion
In Leicestershire we have reached a landmark figure of having 276 out of 282 eligible schools achieving national healthy school status (NHSS) which means that 98% of our schools have a foundation of health and wellbeing in place by having fulfilled the 41 criteria regarding the the core themes of personal social health education, healthy eating, physical activity and emotional health and wellbeing. This is an extraordinary achievement, Healthy Schools is a voluntary programme and its local success is through the hard work and dedication of schools across the county. The full list of schools can be downloaded here.
From April 2011 onwards national healthy school status (NHSS) will no longer be awarded although schools can still say that they are a healthy school and they can still use the healthy schools logo as long as they achieved NHSS prior to 28th March 2011
The coalition government has stated its continuing commitment to Healthy Schools as a means to improve the health and wellbeing of children and young people. Therefore Healthy Schools is continuing.
To reflect the Government’s commitment to reducing bureaucracy for schools, a revised Healthy Schools Toolkit has been developed. The old national website closed on the 28th March 2011 and the Department for Education (DfE) website is now the main national source of information for healthy schools www.education.gov.uk/healthyschools . The Healthy Schools Toolkit is now available to download from the DfE website or from this website by clicking on to the ‘Enhancement’ tab on the home page.
The Healthy Schools Toolkit is designed to help schools ‘plan, do and review’ health and wellbeing improvements for children and young people in their schools. The toolkit is based around the health & wellbeing change model which is the basis of the enhancement model.
How does it work?
The programme operates a whole school approach to education and health improvement in schools ensuring that the whole community is involved in the process.
Toolkit overview
The toolkit consists of downloadable folders containing
• Examples- to show how other schools are making health and wellbeing improvements
• Adaptable templates- a planning template, which replaces the HWIT, a whole school review template, which replaces the annual review and a school story template
• Information and frameworks: to help schools identify needs, define health and wellbeing outcomes, select activiies/interventions and review achievements, based on the previous support materials.
• Further reading
Whole school review template overview
The whole school review template replaces the online annual review tool. It is a straightforward MS word document that schools can use to summarise their foundation for health & wellbeing provision. It can easily be adapted by schools, clusters and local areas according to local needs.
Any information you had input into the previous annual review will have been transferred into the new template and emailed to you by the national team by the end of March 2011.
We suggest that you complete/update the whole school review at least every 2 years. Local arrangements for quality assurance and local recognition are being developed. Completed whole school reviews can be sent for quality assurance to Jane Roberts; Health & Wellbeing Manager, Leicestershire County Council jane.roberts@leics.gov.uk
Planning Template Overview
The planning template replaces the online Health & Wellbeing Improvement Tool (HWIT). It is a MS Excel tool that schools can download and use to record and monitor their health & wellbeing improvement plans. We will continue to award local recognition to schools in recognition of their work on Health & Wellbeing priorities
Completed Planning Templates can be sent for quality assurance to Jane Roberts: Health & Wellbeing Manager, Leicestershire County Council jane.roberts@leics.gov.uk
Local Support
Who can I contact for support with Healthy Schools?
All enquiries should be directed to Jane Roberts Health & Wellbeing Manager via Antonia Gallo antonia.gallo@leics.gov.uk
What level of support can we expect?
• We will continue to hold termly locality meetings and update the local Leicestershire Healthy Schools website and the Leicestershire Healthy Tots (Early Years) website www.leicestershirehealthytots/org.uk
• We will continue to publish a newsletter to provide updates once a term
• If schools work together as a cluster, we may be able to attend occassional cluster meetings
• Local arrangements will be developed for quality assurance and recognition.
What impact does the programme have on schools?
Schools are faced with a wealth of demands, guidance, targets and directives. Healthy schools can help make sense of these and provide a framework for a co-ordinated and effective approach to the planning and delivery health and wellbeing improvement in schools.
Being a healthy school requires the support of the whole school community - pupils, staff, parents, governors, service providers and members of the wider community. Representatives of each group to form a health and wellbeing development group to coordinate and steer activities. This hopefully ensures that messages delivered in the curriculum are reinforced through opportunities and activities in schools and home.
What do participating schools say about the programme?
"Becoming a healthy school has meant fundamental changes for our school and it has changed the culture and atmosphere for the better. When you walk into the school you immediately pick up on the Healthy Schools ethos and the holistic approach to improving the physical, emotional and social health and well-being of our children. They are now making much better, more informed choices about food, exercise and friendships which is already having an impact on their ability to enjoy a healthy lifestyle."
"We had a lot of support from parents when we originally achieved Healthy Schools Status and with sustaining our healthy schools work. The school council has played an important role as well with children having a say in some of the key decisions. We are now working on our identified health and wellbeing priorities in a bit more depth and are hoping to achieve some meaningful outcomes that will have a real impact on the health and wellbeing of the children who attend our school ."