Health Promoting Schools: Ngā Kura Tairanga Hauora

Health Promoting Schools (HPS) is an approach that supports school communities to create and sustain environments that improve and maintain their hauora (health and wellbeing).

Achieving Health Promoting Schools: Guidelines for Promoting Health in Schools captures international HPS principles and practices. This guide summarises success factors and actions for promoting health in schools, and six essential elements are highlighted:

• Healthy school policies;
• Physical environment;
• Social environment;
• Individual health skills and competencies;
• Community links; and
• Health services.

Research tells us schools should take a sustained strategic multi-faceted whole-school approach for better and more equitable health and education outcomes. This includes engaging students, staff, school leaders and whānau collaboratively in leading change.

Any school can use and adapt health promoting principles and practices to their context. There are many Aotearoa NZ specific frameworks, models and resources that have been developed to support this.

The HPS facilitators at Community and Public Health offer their knowledge, skills, time and connections with health and community services to schools (mostly decile 1 to 4). They work in a flexible partnership to develop health and wellbeing approaches to improve the hauora of the school’s community. Schools can use appreciative inquiry to identify what priorities are important to their community; such as:

• Mental wellbeing;
• Nutrition;
• Physical Activity;
• Whānau engagement;
• Sun safety;
• Cybersafety;
• Staff wellbeing; and
• Sustainability.

The inquiry-based approach used by the HPS Team is focussed on outcomes and building on what schools already do – by integrating health and wellbeing objectives and actions into school planning and reporting processes.

The staff at Community and Public Health support all schools by offering professional development opportunities for teachers, and facilitating Primary School Health and Wellbeing Leadership Forums.

• The Health Promoting Schools Magazine highlights HPS projects from schools across the region. Get inspired each term by what schools are doing to promote health and wellbeing in their community.
• The Hauora in Schools Updates provide reflections and research on wellbeing in education – no longer produced.

Documents and Links

Health Promoting Schools

• Health Promoting Schools in Canterbury (Community and Public Health)
• Health and wellbeing resources and tools for schools (Te Kete Ipurangi)
• Health and Physical Education in the NZ Curriculum (Ministry of Education)
• School Evaluation Indicators (Education Review Office 2016)
• Aotearoa NZ Child and Youth Wellbeing Strategy (Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet 2019)
• Achieving Health Promoting Schools: Guidelines for Promoting Health in Schools (IUHPE 2009)

• Health Promoting Schools New Zealand
• New Zealand Curriculum Online
• Ministry of Education
• Health Promoting Schools (WHO)

Mental Wellbeing and Pastoral Care

• What makes a good life? Children and young people’s views on wellbeing (Oranga Tamariki and the Children’s Commissioner 2019)
• Pastoral care and pastoral care teams: a review to inform policy and practice in schools (Community and Public Health 2018).
• The Good New Habits Book 2018 by Ian Vickers [1.6MB].
• Ian Vickers’ presentation from the 2018 Staff Wellbeing Workshop [10MB Slideshow – PPSX file]
• Wellbeing for Success: A resource for schools (Education Review Office 2016)
• Wellbeing for Success: Evaluation Indicators for Student Wellbeing (Education Review Office NZ 2016)

• Wellbeing in Schools (Ministry of Education)
• Wellbeing@School
• Sparklers (All Right?)

Diseases and Immunisation

• Infectious diseases (Ministry of Health)
• Remember the two week Pool Rule – exclusion period for swimming pools after gastrointestinal illness

• Year 7 and 8 school immunisations (Ministry of Health).

Becoming a Healthy School

• Water-only Schools Toolkit (Canterbury DHB and NZDA). Hard copies available to order if you are in our coverage area.
• Healthy Events and Fundraisers (Community and Public Health). Hard copies available to order if you are in our coverage area.
• Ngā Kaupapa Here: School Alcohol Policies (Community and Public Health 2019). Hard copies available to order if you are in our coverage area.

Health Promoting Schools Magazine

Issue 64 – Term 4 2019

There’s something in the water…

Okains Bay School faces a health challenge that most kura don’t have to consider: the water that comes out of their taps can’t be trusted as safe to drink, and can make the students sick if they do drink it. This is because the township sources its water from a river which is susceptible to pollution in various ways.

The students have been learning a lot this year about water and its connections with how we live our lives. The school was visited recently by two scientists who helped them examine what kinds of nasties might be living in their tap water.

Projects and initiatives supported by the HPS Team

Primary School Health and Wellbeing Leadership Forums are opportunities for student health teams to come together with health and community agencies. The aim is for students to share, plan and get support for the work they are doing to promote hauora in their schools.

Healthy Ōpāwaho is a collaborative project with the vision of empowering young people to lead community action to help create a healthy Ōpāwaho/Heathcote river.

Edible Canterbury supports school gardening and orchards in schools.