Healthy School Vision

To provide opportunities for children to reflect on their health and lifestyle choices and how they affect their physical and mental health. It is our vision and mission at County Bridge Primary School to expose children to the reality and impact of poor health and lifestyle choices and provide the knowledge to make informed, positive choices; resulting in children making positive preparations to live a healthy life.

Intent

In our school, we ensure opportunities are provided for children to exercise regularly through engaging, physical activity to support their health and fitness. Being able to reflect on how healthy food and exercise choices positively impact on our mental health is a key priority, as well as providing opportunities for children to explore the negative impact on unhealthy lifestyle choices. We provide a high quality curriculum for Healthy Schools, which focuses on ensuring that the following aims from the National Curriculum for physical education are met:

• Our children ‘are physically active for sustained periods of time’
• Our children ‘lead healthy, active lives.’

These aims are at the forefront of our Healthy Schools curriculum and we ensure that exercise and food choices are discussed regularly by all staff throughout all parts of the school day to promote leading healthy and active lives.

Implementation

Healthy Schools is delivered across a range of subjects in our school: primarily through Science, PSHE and Physical Education. As a school, we ensure that children receive the highest quality teaching from all staff across these lessons. Our staff team regularly talk to children about their diet choices and positively encourage all children to participate in physical activity. Our children are encouraged to complete one mile of walking or jogging a week at break times and are set weekly challenges that focus on short physical activities to promote exercise, while also encouraging competition between classes.

To ensure that children leave our school in the right direction to leading a healthy, active life, our healthy schools curriculum begins as soon as children enter our school. Personal, Social and Emotional development is a prime area in our Early Years Foundation Stage, children are taught how to look after their own bodies and eat healthily. This links specifically to the ‘Managing Self’ Early Learning Goals.

Staff at our school regularly discuss diet and exercise choices with children, promoting and explaining the importance and effect on our physical and mental health. Our school ensures that all children in Early Years and Key Stage 1 have access to healthy snacks before offering children the opportunity to make their own healthy diet choices at break times as they transition into Key Stage 2. Key Stage 2 staff members have the vital role of regularly observing and discussing children’s snack choices, offering a reminder as to why we should select healthy snacks over unhealthy snacks.

Members of our School Council team discuss any concerns or questions relating to Healthy Schools in their meetings, aiming to find suggestions on how to make County Bridge Primary School even healthier. Putting children at the centre of our decisions is another means of providing opportunities for children to voice their thoughts and opinions on how our school can promote healthy lifestyles.

As a school, we are committed to creating an enjoyable and educational atmosphere around being healthy. We regularly deliver initiatives and incentives to inspire children to think more about their diet and exercise choices with a fun and engaging approach. We provide several opportunities for children to take part in a range of after-school clubs and all children participate in a live weekly workout.

Impact

Children at our school discuss their diet and exercise choices daily with their peers and staff. Staff can be heard asking children about their snacks, discussing whether they are healthy or not and imparting knowledge of the impact of either a healthy or unhealthy snack can have on our bodies. Our staff team have also promoted and encouraged children to take part in initiatives such as ‘Eat Them to Defeat Them’, which provided our children the opportunity to taste a variety of vegetables in a fun, non-pressurised environment. Children displayed an excitement around the initiative and could be regularly heard discussing the vegetables that they tried or were going to try. During the six-week initiative, children made healthier choices at lunchtimes and could talk confidently about the importance of a healthy lifestyle.

Our children look forward to physical activity in the form of physical education lessons, but there is also a real buzz of excitement around our weekly live workout and our weekly challenges. The children at our school embrace the competitive nature of our weekly challenges and discuss how to manage their mind-set and competitive manner.