3.2 Health and wellbeing
Children spend a significant proportion of their time at school (approximately 190 days in each school year), which means that schools are well positioned to support all children’s health and wellbeing through the learning opportunities and the learning environment itself.
Policy makers in the UK recognise the importance of personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education and, from 2020, governments across the four UK nations introduced new statutory curricula to provide education on health and wellbeing. A ‘whole school approach’ in this area recognises the importance of working collaboratively with all parts of the school community – children, families and staff – and may include behaviour policy, curriculum design, care and support for children and engagement with parents.
At times this health and wellbeing is supported in schools through collaborations with specialist external agencies, e.g. for physical health needs a school may refer to the school nurse, General Practitioner (GP) and Community Paediatricians; for mental health needs a school may refer to school nurses, GPs, school counsellors, clinical or educational psychologists and specialist services such as the Children and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS).
Activity 7
Task 1
Drawing on your own experiences, what opportunities have you had or are there for supporting children’s health and wellbeing in a primary setting?
Task 2
Watch the following video. How is playing and learning outdoors said to support children’s health and wellbeing?
Transcript: Video 4 Health and wellbeing through outdoor learning
[MUSIC PLAYING]
MANDY TULLOCH: Health and wellbeing is teaching children how to be safe, to look after themselves, and to be healthy and happy for the rest of their lives.
HEATHER TIPPING: A lot of our lessons inside, especially health and wellbeing, they can feel quite synthetic inside, and outside is a really excellent place to make it a more natural experience.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
MANDY TULLOCH: During the afternoon, I take half a class worth of children out, and these are early stages and we go out every week throughout the year, and we use that as a support for health and wellbeing. So it may be that we are exploring, looking for different aspects of seasonal nature, or it may be talking about their feelings and how outside can help to support them and their health and wellbeing.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
In the work that we are doing here, by using green spaces, we are trying to support an individual’s health and wellbeing. And what we’re trying to achieve is that children are feeling calm and alert and in a position so that they can go on to learn and do all the good stuff at school. And you can sometimes just see the worry just fade away from them. They start giggling. A child who was inside, who seemed very sad or worried about things, is running along and is taking the initiative. So it’s a wonderful opportunity for children to have, to be out in green spaces.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
HEATHER TIPPING: Initially, I think it showed that some children just don’t get the opportunity to play, and so they found games very hard at the start of the year, winning and losing and setting rules and sticking to them. And they’ve really progressed with that.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
There was a girl in my class who was very quiet inside and wouldn’t put herself forward answering questions inside the classroom and the effect that the outside had on her was immediate, she would have really in-depth conversations, she would talk about her life experiences, she would volunteer for leadership roles, and sometimes she would be a bit feisty. And it’s nothing that I had seen from her inside. So it was really lovely to see a different side to her personality.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
It’s really built resilience in the children that I’ve had over the last couple of years. When I say to them, ‘We’re going out in almost all weathers’, you can see on their faces when it’s raining the, ‘Oh no’, but then they get outside 10 minutes and they don’t even notice. It’s also the feeling of accomplishment when they do something like climb a tree for the first time. And I don’t notice it on a day-to-day basis, but by the end of the year or the next year when I take on a new class, I can see that how far my previous class have come and that makes it worthwhile.
MANDY TULLOCH: A child rolling down a hill and that’s helping with their proprioception and their vestibular senses. This is helping them to feel their body and their awareness. And this ultimately has found out through research, is then leading to children being able to concentrate better in class. This will then go onto them having better learning and also ultimately being happier at school. So something as simple as rolling down a hill has massive benefits to each and every child.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Discussion
You may have noted that the educators in the video clip promote the outdoors as a ‘natural experience’, suggesting that the outdoors can enrich children’s health and wellbeing. The educators remark that children do not have the same opportunities to play and experience the outdoor world and taking the children outside they have a freedom to run and climb trees that they don’t have in the classroom. One educator described a young girl who in the classroom was quiet but outside had a different level of confidence allowing her to engage in in-depth conversations. These opportunities are described as helping the children to build resilience and confidence that has positive impacts in the classroom.
If you’d like to know more about mental health among children, you might like to explore this OpenLearn course: Supporting children’s mental health and wellbeing [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] .