School Directors

7. Implement health education that provides students with the knowledge, attitudes, skills, and experiences needed for lifelong healthy eating and physical activity

Health education provides formal opportunities for students to acquire knowledge and learn essential life skills that can foster healthy behaviors, such as physical activity and healthy eating. Taught by qualified teachers, quality health education includes instruction on essential topics and skills that protect and promote physical, social, and emotional health and safety and provides students with ample opportunities to practice health enhancing behaviors. State-of-the-art health education features a sequential curriculum consistent with state or national standards, adequate instructional time, and assessment to improve students’ knowledge and skills.
School health education aims to help students develop the knowledge and skills which are needed to make informed decisions, practice healthy behaviours and create conditions that are conducive to health. School health education can be delivered in a number of different ways, depending on a country's needs and available resources. It can be taught as a specific subject, as part of other subjects such as science, home economics, mathematics and agriculture, or ideally as a combination of both. Health education policies that focus on diet and physical activity ought to:
• provide knowledge and skills, and help to develop attitudes about the relationship between a good diet, physical activity, and health.
• address the safe preparation of food and its consumption as an essential positive and enjoyable aspect of life.
• allow students to have the opportunities to practice important skills, such as decision-making about food and physical activity.
• allow students to identify not only barriers to being physically active and making healthy food choices, but also solutions to overcome the identified barriers.
• provide media and marketing literacy to students, especially related to foods and non-alcoholic beverages. Involve teachers who have received the best possible training and are equipped with the knowledge and skills necessary to effectively impart health messages to students.

Learning Objective

The learning objective of this step is to give knowledge and skills how school directors can implement approaches for developing health education in schools, which goes beyond simply increasing physical education activities.

Online Resources

• Public health networkThe Networks are for all individuals, organisations and sectors with a role to play in improving nutrition and levels of physical activity in Wales. They support members by providing and improving access to information and by providing a forum for sharing knowledge and good practice, enabling members to learn from each other.
• Skills for HealthThe document is guidelines on skills-based health education including life skills: an important component of a child-friendly/health-promoting school.
• 5 Approaches to Physical Education in Schools The website presents physical education in the context of schooling with different curriculum models. Health education in schools: the document gives the perspective of teacher training when it comes to providing quality health education in schools
• Health education in schools From information to empowerment models: the article studies the different approaches in health education