Health and Wellbeing includes experiences and outcomes for personal and social development, understanding of health, physical education and physical activity, and home economics.
It also includes approaches and activities such as physical activity and nutrition, planned by pre-school settings, schools or colleges to promote the health and wellbeing of their learners and the wider community. Children and young people need to experience what it feels like to develop, enjoy and live a healthy lifestyle. They also need to learn ways of dealing with the many new and challenging situations they will experience throughout their lives. A healthy lifestyle supports physical, social and emotional wellbeing, and underpins successful learning. Concerns about the health, diet and activity levels of Scotland’s children and young people, social inclusion and inequalities in health emphasise the importance of a focus on health and wellbeing throughout education, starting in the early years.
Learning through health and wellbeing enables children and young people to:
- experience positive aspects of healthy living and activity for themselves
- develop the knowledge and understanding, skills, abilities and attitudes necessary for their physical, emotional and social wellbeing now and in their future lives
- make informed decisions in order to improve their physical, emotional and social wellbeing
- apply their physical, emotional and social skills to pursue a healthy lifestyle
- make a successful move to the next stage of education or work
- for some, open up opportunities to excel in sport or to pursue careers in health and leisure industries.
This curricular area underpins everything that is taught in our school as children need to have the social skills to interact in collaborative work as well as know how to keep themselves safe and healthy in order to perform at their best. Emotional health is also extremely important in developing our children within the four capacities of successful learners, confident individuals, effective contributors and responsible citizens. Parents/carers are informed by class teacher before sensitive subject such as puberty and reproduction are covered in class.
We take the health of our pupils very seriously. Therefore, in addition to two hours of P.E. each week our children also take part in our Daily Mile initiative. This involves the children walking, running or skipping round the playground for approximately 15 minutes on the days when they don’t have P.E. This extra bit of exercise has been shown to reduce obesity in schools and improve the children’s ability to focus on their learning. We will take the children out in most weather conditions so please ensure that they come to school with a waterproof jacket and appropriate footwear (and in Winter possibly a spare pair of socks!).
