Health and Wellbeing across learning is the responsibility of all school staff and is a key objective at Ralston Primary School. Health and Wellbeing should encourage pupils to explore and clarify their beliefs, attitudes and values; develop personal and interpersonal skills and increase their knowledge and understanding of a range of health issues.
At Ralston Primary School, we aim to:
- Support children to make informed decisions to improve their mental, emotional, social and physical wellbeing.
- Provide challenge and enjoyment for all children.
- Promote positive aspects of healthy living and activity for our children.
- Equip children with the ability to apply their mental, emotional, social and physical skills to pursue a healthy lifestyle.
- Encourage children to make a successful move to the next stage of education or work.
- Establish a pattern of health and wellbeing which will be sustained into adult life.
- Foster links between school, home, community and partner agencies to ensure a collective responsibility for promoting good health
Health and Wellbeing is structured into the six organisers below. Effective Health and Wellbeing requires exchange of information, mutual support and collaboration with community partners, schools and parents. At Ralston, we actively seek opportunities to promote health and wellbeing through our coherent and continuously progressive health programme.
Mental, Emotional, Social and Physical Wellbeing
- Mental and emotional wellbeing:
Children learn to recognise and express feelings, understand how feelings affect how they behave, know where to get help and support and how to manage stressful situations. At Ralston Primary we teach children this using Barnardo’s PATHS Programme. The programme is designed to enhance children’s social competence and understanding, while supporting the development of self-control, emotional awareness, and problem-solving skills. It has shown to improve children’s self-esteem and helps children form positive relationships with their peers.
2. Social wellbeing:
Children learn about United Nations Convention on Rights of the Child (UNCRC) Rights of the Child and how to put these into practice. This includes how to value themselves and others and how they can contribute to the life of their nursery, school, and wider community. Children will learn about positive relationships and how to build good and supportive friendships with others.
3. Physical wellbeing:
Children learn about the human body and how to apply that knowledge to stay healthy and well. Children will be provided with the opportunity to understand risk, develop the skills they need to stay safe, how to cope in an emergency and how to travel safely.
Planning for Choices and Changes
Children are provided with opportunities to discuss and identify the changes they will experience, both physically and emotionally as they grow from childhood to adulthood. Children are provided with opportunities to identify good and bad choices and how these will affect themselves and those around them. They will develop their decision-making skills that will help them make good choices for the future.
Physical Education, Physical Activity and Sport
Physical education provides learners with a platform from which they can build physical competences, improve aspects of fitness and develop personal and interpersonal skills and attributes. It enables learners to develop the concepts and skills necessary for participation in a wide range of physical activity, sport, dance and outdoor learning, and enhances their physical wellbeing in preparation for leading a fulfilling, active and healthy lifestyle.
Children will experience opportunities to develop physical skills, build confidence, work with others and to foster a positive attitude towards health and fitness. They will work with a range of equipment and apparatus, both indoors and outdoors. This will be provided through a minimum of two hours of P.E. per week and through our commitment to the Daily Mile Challenge, which is used as a ‘brain break’ during the day.
Food and Health
Children develop their understanding of a healthy diet and expand their knowledge and skills to make healthy food choices. This knowledge and understanding will hopefully lead to children developing lifelong healthy eating habits. They explore how the dietary needs of individuals and groups vary through life stages and about everyday routines including good oral health.
Substance Misuse
Children learn about the use and misuse of a variety of substances including over the counter and prescribed medicines, alcohol, drugs, tobacco and solvents. They develop their understanding of the impact of risk-taking behaviour on their life choices. This will enable them to make well informed personal choices with the aim of promoting healthy lifestyles. This programme of work is in liaison with outside agencies.
Relationships, Sexual Health and Parenthood (RSHP)
Within the wider context of Health and Wellbeing lies the need to ensure that children are provided with appropriate, structured and coherent learning experiences to help them develop an understanding of how to maintain positive relationships with a variety of people and develop their awareness of how thoughts, feelings, attitudes, values and beliefs can influence decisions about relationships, and sexual health. This is taught at each stage using the National RSHP Resource which provides a comprehensive set of learning activities structured in line with Curriculum for Excellence.
Health and wellbeing cannot exist in a vacuum. It requires exchange of information, mutual support and collaboration with community partners, schools and parents.
