Health Promoting Schools

Needs assessment

Photographs of a young boy eating fruit and girls at a healthy tuckshop

Before embarking on health promoting school development it is important to know where your school is now. A health needs assessment will help you identify what the issues are, who is affected by them and what you can do to address them. 

There are many different ways of consulting pupils, staff and parents and carers during a needs assessment, including the following: 

  • prepare, circulate and analyse questionnaires
  • focus groups
  • use Circle Time
  • meetings
  • interviews
  • pupil councils
  • parent teacher association
  • open events
  • draw-and-write technique for younger pupils (see 'Confidence to Learn' below)
  • as part of the taught curriculum, that is surveys, gathering statistics, active citizenship.    

Examples of questionnaires can be downloaded below. These should be adapted by schools to meet their individual needs and it would also be useful to add an introduction explaining why the school is conducting a needs assessment. 

The results of the needs assessment should form the basis of your planning.

Photograph portrait of a smiling boy and a drawing of a healthy child

Confidence to Learn

'Confidence to Learn' is an internationally acclaimed teaching and learning resource for primary schools which aims to extend health education and health promotion development in the school, in keeping with the philosophy of the health promoting school. 

It uses a child-centred approach and explains how research in the classroom enables teachers to look at what motivates a child to learn and achieve. 

Originally launched by the Health Education Board for Scotland (now NHS Health Scotland) in 1999, a video to complement the resource and bring the strategies to life through the classroom experience was sent to primary and additional support needs schools in 2004. 

practitioners rule