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Healthy Schools

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• W/C 20/05/13

As a specialist science and health academy, we have embraced the National Healthy Schools Programme and are currently engaging with the Healthy School’s Enhancement Model.

The National Healthy Schools Programme has four core themes, which relate to both the school curriculum and the emotional and physical learning environment in school:

Achieving National Healthy School Status recognises that being healthy is not just about children and young people, it is about the whole school community. And it’s not just what happens in the curriculum, it’s about the entire school day.

The Healthy Schools Enhancement Model has been designed to help schools develop the wider thinking and planning they will need to do in order to achieve better outcomes around health and well-being for children and young people. It has also been designed to help schools to strive for lasting health and well-being behaviour changes in children and young people, with particular focus on providing targeted support for those who are most at risk.

We have established a Health & Wellbeing Development Group (HWDG) to coordinate our Healthy Schools work. Our HWDG helps to make sure:

• strategic decisions at governors’ meetings and senior leadership team (SLT) meetings reflect our school’s commitment to the health and wellbeing of children and young people;
• health and wellbeing is included in our school improvement plan; and
• consideration is given to health and wellbeing in budget decisions.

Our HWDG works closely with key partners towards achieving locally agreed health and well-being outcomes. This reflects school-based local and national priorities as outlined in the Local Area Agreements, Children and Young People’s Plans and PCT operational plans.

We currently have two priorities:

Local: The U18 conception rate (NI 112)

School: Obesity among secondary school children

Arising from our specialist focus, students will find that new doors for the future are opened and new horizons for personal achievement are developed. The NHS is a very significant local employer; there are opportunities for a wide variety of students across the health and care sectors, and Bradford Royal Infirmary is very close by. We are developing partnerships with Bradford University and the local NHS Trusts, which will balance Dixons' private sector and enterprise branding with a more public service focused school.

The specialism also provides a good focus for extended services, for example we have recently secured funding to set up a teenage advice and lifestyle centre at the academy. The new school could be a base for our NHS partners to deliver health education locally for students, staff and families. It is a specialism that will benefit from the attachment of a new primary school and possibly nursery provision on the site.