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Section 6 Issues in Health Education and Health Promotion 6.1 Partnerships In developing their health education provision, schools can draw upon a range of agencies and individuals that offer assistance. These partnerships are most productive when schools have a clear strategy for selecting, planning, coordinating and monitoring the contributions each offers. 6.2 Parents Parents and school boards are an important support for health education. Involving parents in aspects of planning and in whole-school activities relating to health education can support pupil progress and promote a shared understanding of, and commitment to, ways of promoting pupils' health and the development of the health-promoting school. 6.3 External support Health professionals such as nurses, doctors and health promotion officers can provide valuable sources of expertise for schools and can contribute to planning health education programmes and input on specific issues such as healthy eating, physical development and sex education. Collaboration with health boards can do much to ensure that a range of health services complements the school's health education programmes. Other contributions from, for example, the fire service, police and other support agencies can enhance the health education programme. However, schools require to take responsibility for identifying and monitoring all contributions to the health education programme. Schools should take steps in their planning process to ensure contributors are in accord with the programme to ensure a coherent approach. By evaluating the contributions of, and by working with, relevant partners, schools can make effective use of community expertise in dealing with health issues. 6.4 Liaison with other schools Schools can do much to achieve continuity and consistency of approach to health education through liaison and collaboration with associated schools. Useful approaches include: making health education a common development initiative amongst the schools in a 5-14 cluster group discussing transfer and continuity across P6/S1 in order to meet pupils' health education needs designating a member of staff to be the health education coordinator in the school with a responsibility for liaison with other schools. [RETURN TO 5-14 ONLINE] [BACK] [INDEX] [NEXT] © The 5-14 Curriculum (Scotland) Guidelines were produced by the Scottish Executive and Learning and Teaching Scotland and are reproduced with permission from the Queen's Printer for Scotland.