Healthy Schools
Eastbury Community Schools and the Healthy Schools Award
Eastbury Community Schools commitment to our students health and well-being has been recognised through the Healthy Schools London programme having achieved the bronze, silver and gold award.
Taking part in the Healthy Schools London (HSL) programme, and working successfully through the tiered awards, has meant that the ECS school community has explicitly focused on work to improve the health and wellbeing of our pupils and staff since 2015
To achieve and maintain Healthy Schools London status ( Bronze award) schools have to provide evidence of promoting health and well-being through the following seven categories
- Leadership, management and managing change
- Policy development
- Learning and teaching, curriculum planning and resourcing
- School ethos, culture, environment and SMSC development
- Provision of support services for children and young people
- Staff continuing professional development (CPD), health and wellbeing
- Partnerships with parents/carers, local communities, external agencies and volunteers to support pupil health and wellbeing
ECS renewed Healthy Schools London status in 2021 which will be retained until November 2024. The opportunities that ECS provides to develop student voice and leadership was specifically commended in our latest award.
ECS focused work on the following areas has led to us being awarded the HSL silver and gold awards.
Promoting healthy eating – Primary Phase
Relationships Education – Secondary Phase
Celebrating Diversity - Secondary Phase
Healthy Schools Gold
Eastbury Community School (ECS) is proud to have achieved the Healthy Schools Gold Award, recognising the school’s sustained and strategic commitment to improving young people’s understanding of behaviours in healthy and unhealthy relationships, sexual health, and how to access appropriate support services. This achievement reflects our whole-school Rights Respecting approach, providing opportunities for students to learn about and through rights to keep themselves and others safe, healthy and happy.
Our focus for the award was informed by baseline data from the LBBD 2024 Children and Young People’s Health Survey. Analysis of this data enabled us to identify key priority areas and design targeted interventions to improve students understanding and confidence in what is a national and local focus area.
Central to this work was a review of aspects of the PSHE education curriculum and identifying opportunities in the wider personal development curriculum for students to develop the knowledge, understanding and skills to safeguard from sexual harassment and harmful sexual behaviour. These themes are reinforced beyond the classroom through assemblies, tutor time discussions, and a range of extracurricular activities, creating regular and meaningful opportunities for the whole school community to reflect on the features of healthy relationships and how to recognise and access support for unhealthy relationships.
Student voice and leadership opportunities at ECS are key in enabling students to link learning in the curriculum, to whole school behaviour for learning and develop the skills for life in Modern Britain. Students feel confident to share their views, lead peer education opportunities and ask for help. Embedding the principles of mutual respect, dignity and equality, has supported to understand not only what healthy relationships look like, but also their right to them.
