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Health promoting schools – back to the future!

Schools will be able to determine how well they are promoting healthy eating and physical activity by completing the self-assessment and will receive a rating based on their answers, an award for their performance, and information on how they might improve their healthy living policies. They can use the award to show parents how they have performed. The scheme has been eagerly anticipated since it was proposed in the Childhood Obesity Plan (DoH 2016) and has generally been well received in the media. However, it is narrow in focus and the strong foundations of the health promoting schools model in the UK appear to have been forgotten or dismissed. In the first few years following the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion (1986) the development of a settings based approach to health resulted in The Healthy Cities Initiative and the Health Promoting Hospitals Initiative (Watson 2008). Work around schools as a health promoting setting saw the European Network of Health Promoting Schools launched in 1993. Members of the Institute of Health Promotion and Health Education have been at the forefront in health promoting school developments both as academics and practitioners: examples include Baric, Lloyd, Tilford, and Tones. It is over 25 years since the ‘health promoting school’ model emerged and became accepted. In the UK support, funding and visibility has waxed and waned with successive governments. By 1999 the Healthy Schools: National Healthy School Standard Guidance with eight key themes had been published and all schools in England were encouraged to participate. It integrated with other later government strategies formulated to improve the health and life chances of children in England including nutritional standards for school lunches and the launch of the School Fruit Scheme. Work on school lunches and provision of fruit and vegetables were practical interventions in schools; the most important indicator of a health promoting setting is policy, with many individuals within a setting being part of the policy making process. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HEALTH PROMOTION AND EDUCATION 2019, VOL. 57, NO. 6, 355–357 https://doi.org/10.1080/14635240.2019.1665926