Lanarkshire Healthy Schools website was created by NHS Lanarkshire Health and Social Care staff, in conjunction with Teachers from North and South Lanarkshire.

It’s available to support children and their families to look after and improve their health and wellbeing by providing a health education framework which can be used by teachers and early years’ practitioners. It runs for a full school year and covers nursery, primary school and secondary school pupils up to S4.

Glasgow University’s Network for Social and Educational Equity (NSEE), created an initial report based on the feedback of teachers using NHS Lanarkshire’s Healthy Schools Approach.

NSEE spoke with teachers from one Lanarkshire Primary School, who have been using this approach for 2 years, to find out their experiences and what they felt they had gained from using this different way of teaching health and wellbeing activities.

One Lanarkshire Teacher contributed to the report saying: “Primary teachers have a huge range of areas to teach, and health and wellbeing is a massive area. I think having something like this in place ensures that the full health and wellbeing curriculum is being covered.”

Jonathan Cavana, Weight Management Service Manager, at NHS Lanarkshire, said: “Lanarkshire Healthy Schools Approach is an interactive way to support pupils and teachers. The website supports all health and wellbeing experiences and outcomes from nursery to S4 in a flexible and non-prescriptive way that allows work to be adapted to the needs of individual classes.

“We’re really pleased with the feedback from teachers demonstrated within the report, it’s not about getting teachers to do anything extra, our aim is to provide a flexible framework of materials that help teachers to plan and deliver health & wellbeing education which complements existing teaching resources.”

Read the full evaluation here.

The Healthy Schools Approach website and materials can be accessed by all members of the public at www.healthyschools.scot.