The new Department of Education Healthy Schools Rating Scheme has been designed to recognise and encourage schools’ contributions to pupils’ health and wellbeing. It celebrates the positive actions that schools are delivering in terms of healthy eating and physical activity and aims to help schools identify useful next steps in their provision.  The scheme is part of a wider series of government actions including the Childhood Obesity Plan.

This voluntary scheme is available for both primary and secondary schools. Schools will complete a self-assessment and then receive a rating based on their responses around food education, compliance with the school food standards, time spent on physical education and the promotion of active travel.  Each participating school will receive a report based on their survey answers, and those achieving Gold, Silver or Bronze awards will receive a certificate. 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 was developed based on testing with schools in summer 2018, is fully endorsed by Torbay Healthy Learning and has now been launched as a beta phase for its first year. DoE would welcome any feedback on the scheme during this phase and will use this to inform future improvements.

Full scheme details, including categories, awards and how to participate can be found in the above link.