Children's Health and Wellbeing in Schools

Nadhim Zahawi Excerpts

Monday 8th July 2019 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Nadhim Zahawi)]

Today, the Department for Education has published details for its new healthy schools rating scheme. This is one of our key commitments under the Government’s childhood obesity plan, which sets a national ambition to halve childhood obesity rates by 2030 and significantly reduce the health inequalities that persist.

The healthy schools rating scheme celebrates the positive actions that schools are delivering in terms of healthy living, healthy eating and physical activity, and it will support schools in identifying further actions that they can take in this area.

This voluntary rating scheme will be available for both primary and secondary schools. Schools will engage in a self-assessment exercise and will receive their rating based on their responses to questions around food education, compliance with the mandatory school food standards, time spent on PE in school and the promotion of active travel for pupils’ journeys to and from school.

The first schools participating in the scheme will receive their reports and certificates in July 2019. We encourage all participating schools to use this scheme to reflect on their future actions, and to share their achievements with parents, pupils and the wider school community.

The scheme is part of a wider series of Government actions to support children’s health and wellbeing, which includes delivering free school meals for over a million disadvantaged children each year; doubling the PE and sport premium to £320 million a year; investing up to £26 million to kick-start sustainable school breakfast clubs; investing £9 million in our holiday activities and food programme in summer 2019; and updating the school food standards to reduce the amount of sugar in school meals.

We welcome any feedback on the scheme during its first year and will use this information to inform future scheme developments. Guidance for schools on the healthy schools rating scheme is now available on www.gov.uk.

[HCWS1695]