Healthy Schools London Awards

Celebrating making a difference

Healthy Schools London is an Awards Programme that will reach out to every London child, working with schools to improve children and young people’s wellbeing.

Just before Christmas we were delighted to announce that Mrs Costello, Junior PSHE Coordinator, had led an application for St Augustine’s Priory for the Healthy Schools Award and that we had been awarded the Healthy Schools London Bronze Award.

Here, Mrs Costello reports on this Award and all that it involves:

‘I am delighted that St Augustine’s Priory has achieved its Healthy Schools London Bronze Award. The award is given to schools to recognise their achievements in supporting the health and wellbeing of their pupils.  The Bronze award requires schools to assess their achievements and identify areas of development.  To gain the award, St Augustine’s Priory had to review how it creates and manages a positive environment which enhances emotional and physical health and wellbeing in school through our curriculum, our policies and the opportunities we provide for our pupils.

We have so much to celebrate and  be proud of at St Augustine’s with our Catholic ethos of caring for others, opportunities for spiritual development, excellent PE provision, healthy school lunches and our  beautiful grounds (just to name a few ).  Reflecting on all this whilst completing the audit forms to achieve the award was very satisfying in itself.

The Healthy Schools London Award scheme is sponsored by the Mayor of London.  It was  set up to help London’s children stay healthy and happy as they grow up and identifies that what happens at school every day is really important.  It aims to recognise and celebrate schools that are making a difference for their pupils.

‘Schools can help children lead a healthy lifestyle directly – to make healthy food choices at lunchtime, to be active at and on the way to school.  More widely, schools can help children learn about their health, and develop their motivation to make healthy choices. The benefits go beyond health.  We know that when children are healthy and happy at school, they can achieve more.’(Healthy Schools London Award).

Last term St Augustine’s Priory invested in an exciting bespoke health package for our school through the  Ealing Health Improvement Team which included a new PSHE (Personal Social Health Economic) scheme of work for Nursery to Upper II.  The package included training and support on best practice to help achieve the Healthy Schools Award and further support to improve the health and well-being of our pupils. The new PSHE scheme of work has been in place since September 2017 and has proved to be very popular with both teachers and pupils.

In 2018 we will be working to attain our Healthy Schools London Silver Award and, more importantly, aiming for our pupils to be healthy, happy and to achieve.  I look forward to the School, its pupils and parents all benefiting from our new initiatives to get to Silver!’