Healthy Schools
We are very proud to announce that during the academic years 2016-2017 and 2017-2018, we achieved the Healthy Schools London bronze, silver and gold awards. We are particularly proud of this as we are one of only five schools in Greenwich to have achieved the gold award. This involved a lot of hard work from our children, staff and in particular, Mrs Binks and Mrs Sheridan.
We started by gaining our bronze award. To achieve this, we had to prove how we met the following criteria:
- The school provides clear leadership to create and manage a positive environment, which enhances emotional and physical health and well-being in school.
- The school has the following policies which are reflected in practice and through ethos, culture and the environment. They are reviewed by consultation every three years.
- The school curriculum includesthese areas of learning which are monitored and evaluated to ensure the quality of teaching and learning: PSHE education, healthy eating, physical activity and emotional healthy and wellbeing.
- The school ethos, culture and environment promote emotional and physical health and wellbeing. The school involves all children and young people in decision-making.
The explanations for how we met each criteria are available to read on our bronze award document, which is attached on the link below.
To achieve the silver award, we had to create an action plan that we could put in place to have an impact on a category linking to healthy schools. We chose to create an action plan linked to healthy eating for Key Stage 2 and a smaller project, linked to physical activity, for the girls in Years 5 and 6. Based on pupil voice surveys and lunch box checks, we decided to write an action plan to help raise the level of healthy packed lunches in our school. Additionally, after receiving some pupil voice from girls in Years 5 and 6 who had a poor attitude to physical activity, we created an action plan to help change this attitude and to get as many upper key stage two girls excited about physical activity as possible.
To achieve the gold award, we had to complete all of the actions we set ourselves on our action plans.
For the healthy eating ‘packed lunch’ project, the actions included:
- Setting up ‘Healthy Schools Ambassadors’
- Collecting baseline data
- Collecting pupil voice and doing lunch box checks
- Opening our food technology kitchen
- Sending home information linked to healthy eating to parents
- Making healthy eating links to our science and PSHE curriculums
- Running a Healthy Schools Week
- Running a healthy packed lunch project across all classes in the school
- Running a healthy packed lunch competition
For the physical activity project, the actions included:
- Collecting baseline data
- Collecting pupil voice about enjoyment in PE lessons, clubs and physical activity
- Running the ‘We can do anything’ event
- Bringing in inspirational women sports people to meet our pupils
- Making physical activity links to our science and PSHE curriculums
- Running a Healthy Schools Week
- Offering new clubs aimed just at girls
During this time, we implemented more actions to our action plan to have a further positive impact on the children in our school. These included:
- Our gardening club being developed so that children now grow and sell different fruit and vegetables
- Gardening club is now open to all children at lunchtime.
- Selling healthy breakfast items to children and parents in the playground at a reasonable price.
- Cookery clubs being run, linked to healthy eating, for all children
- The school grounds have been completely updated with new sports courts and equipment being put in.
- The playground being covered in artificial grass to allow children to run freely and play games
For further information on how we achieved these awards, please see the PSHE twitter page (@PSHE_alexmcleod) or click on the attached documents to read the Healthy Schools London bronze, silver and gold documents.
Healthy eating update for parents
