Leadership and management
There are a number of steps that should be taken to effectively lead and manage health promoting school development.
Appoint a health coordinator
Health promotion intersects with a wide range and variety of activities and subject areas and therefore should be managed from a vantage point that ensures school-wide vision and priority.
One named individual should have the responsibility to hold together the various facets of health promoting school development. This is likely to be someone from the senior management team appointed as the school's health coordinator.
Health committee
Schools will find it helpful to have a health committee or working party to oversee all health promoting school developments. Membership of such a committee should be drawn from teaching and non-teaching staff and could also include pupils, parents and partner agencies as appropriate. The committee will be chaired by the health coordinator.
Tasks for the health committee include:
- establishing a shared and common understanding of health promoting schools amongst all members of the school and the wider community
- establishing and publishing shared vision, aims and objectives and clarifying how they relate to the overall school vision and aims
- identifying priorities for development through auditing and setting targets within these
- monitoring and evaluating
- consultation regarding health promoting school development with pupils, parents, carers, teaching and non-teaching staff and other partners as appropriate
- incorporation of health promotion within school development planning, in-service training, staff development and continuing professional development (CPD) opportunities.
It should be possible to subsume the health promoting school agenda, as a development cycle within the overall development cycle using the seven key areas and Quality Indicators in How Good is Our School? (HMIE, 2002) There are also clear links to the five National Priorities as shown in the following illustration.
Word file: National Priorities and How Good Is Our School? links in the health promoting school (24.5KB)In this way, health can feature as an ongoing, intrinsic and permanent part of a school's development planning and planning for improvement processes.
Working with pupils
The following are ways that pupils can be involved in health promoting schools development:
- active involvement in publicising health promotion, through, for example, an enterprise activity
- input to school assemblies
- taking part in supported study activities.
Working with parents and carers
It is vital to involve parents and carers in the health promoting school and this can be done by:
- presentation and information to the parent - teacher association or parents' association
- providing parents/carers with relevant information on the school's approach to health education within a range of topics: for example, drug education, sex education, healthy eating
- involving parents/carers in health promoting activities in school and after school.
Promoting your work
It will be necessary to let everyone know that promotion of health overarches all that the school seeks to do. The following may be considered as part of the overall approach:
- setting aside a dedicated section in school newsletters
- 'promoting health in our school' or 'health promoting school' appended as sub-heading to newsletters/leaflets/all school publicity materials
- ensuring that all activities that promote health are fully described as such to staff, pupils, parents and carers.
