Better schools through health: learning from practice

with tasks core to the curriculum and therefore have significant lack of time for projectslike ours. But these difficulties are general and common to most of the projects or otherwork. With persistence, professionalism from the national team and the enthusiasm ofschool leaders, we work to overcome these difficulties.How do we know how successful it was?Evaluation of planned activities over the last years show that schools have made effortsin the areas of mental health, diversification of learning, physical activity, addiction,healthy eating, etc. Evaluation also highlighted the most important elements crucial tothe effectiveness of our work. These elements are:•• support of the project by headmasters•• inner-motivation of members of school project team•• team work•• support of the national team.Leaders from school project teams emphasised•• systematic planning•• evaluation of good projects•• working on interpersonal relations between pupils, teachers and parents asthe most important topic for schools.What could be learnt?We have learned that it is important that programmes are tailored to the needs of anindividual school and integrated into and across the whole work of the school. Schoolmanagement must support new programmes if they are to be successful.The SNHPS aims to develop good quality work at national as well as local level.Together with the Ministry of Education and Sport a model for healthy lifestyles is beingdeveloped for use in primary schools in the period 2008-2010. This aims to incorporateinto the core curriculum topics such as healthy nutrition, physical activity, mentalhealth, alcohol and tobacco use. So, health topics are being worked into all parts of theschool life making the promotion of health part of the everyday for all those who liveand work in the school setting.32