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Introduction The Guide for Teachers and Managers is a working document offering advice on how to address various aspects of the health education national guidelines. In other words the guidelines provide the 'what' of the curriculum; the guide offers advice on the 'how'. It sets out examples of practice that have been found to be effective in different classroom or school contexts. These are intended to offer schools ideas or strategies that may be of direct use, or to develop approaches to suit their own particular circumstances. They are not to be regarded as prescriptive or definitive answers to issues involved in implementing Health Education 5-14. The Guide for Teachers and Managers emphasises the importance of certain key principles that should underpin all planning, teaching and assessment in health education. These can be summarised as follows. The approach to planning and assessment should be as simple and streamlined as possible. Strands should be the main organisational features for planning. A holistic approach to the assessment of skills, values and dispositions, knowledge and understanding          should be adopted. The bullet points within attainment targets are intended to indicate a 'learning path' through the levels          and to illustrate pupil attainment. There should be a focus on the development of pupils' understanding. Each of these key principles is further developed in later sections of the guide. The guide is intended to support schools and teachers as they review the existing provision for health education. Schools will need to give careful consideration to how they will, over time, amend programmes to fit with the new guidelines. Reviewing existing practice is the first step in the process so that staff can decide what changes if any may be needed. It will be important that this first step starts from existing courses or topics: there is no need to start with a clean sheet. As the revised guidelines are firmly based on the previous version and on good practice, any gaps or overlaps identified are likely to be minor. This will mean that much of the school's use of existing practice, resources and programmes of work will still be relevant. However, over time, some changes are likely to be required in certain aspects of planning, teaching, assessment or reporting. Examples of the types of changes that schools may decide are necessary when reviewing health education include: incorporating new strand titles into existing programme plans and reporting formats realigning some aspects to match particular levels and to avoid repetition from primary to secondary identifying content within existing programmes that is no longer required devising a 'best-fit' model for holistic assessment looking for opportunities to develop and consolidate health education in new areas of the curriculum self-evaluation and review of existing provision with use of evaluation 'checklists'. When decisions have been reached on the amendments required, it will be important to plan for these carefully by ensuring that existing strengths are maintained and by identifying timescales for amendments within the school development plan. This guide is not exhaustive in its coverage of every issue. The different sections are intended to: offer examples of real practice in planning (Section 1), and in teaching, learning and assessment          (Section 2) identify implications for managers (Section 3) provide further detailed exemplification of attainment targets (Section 4) show how health education relates to wider aspects of personal and social development (Section 5) identify links with ICT guidelines (Section 6) provide some background on the concept of the health-promoting school (Section 7) suggest other helpful sources of information and resources (Section 8). [RETURN TO 5-14 ONLINE] [BACK] [INDEX] [NEXT]