Better schools through health: learning from practice

school method to promote healthy change. So one of the main skills that is reallyimportant for the health promotion workers is that they are really communicators andare able to listen very well. By doing that they will get the real issues on the table. It isright to say here that it takes a lot of time and energy to get all the workers on the sameline. Some of them felt really comfortable in their (old) way of working. But overall,everybody understood that the method has to be made more effective and efficient.Healthy schools make pupils smarterThe overall environment and ethos is most important in this approach and the wellbeingof all in the school; teachers, other staff, parents and the youngsters. Researchdemonstrates that this approach promotes positive outcomes across the schoolcommunity. Teachers have less days off work, because of stress and illness, parentswill be more involved in extra-curricular activities, pupils feel better and there is lessfighting and aggressive behaviour among the whole school population. Last butnot least, because of this approach, the school results of children and young peopleimprove significantly!Health promotion then becomes a core set of tools towards meeting the school’s maingoal: good education given by enthusiastic and really involved teachers, involvementof parents so that other activities were picked up by enthusiastic parents and as aresult of that; pupils reaching higher scores; the development of young people asbetter workers and participants in society. An effective way of getting a higher talent/ability developing! For school management then this becomes the main reason to takeresponsibility on health topics.A teacher from a healthy primary school in Rotterdam:For us it is really important that our children can develop totally on all topics. Being a healthyschool we benefit from this and increase the well-being and self-assurance of our population.It is our mission to facilitate our children so that they all enjoy school and behave as wellsocial persons. We recommend the ‘ totally healthy school approach’ to all other schoolsA teacher from a healthy secondary school in Rotterdam:Now, working as a teacher on my healthy school, it is much easier to talk in the class aboutlove and sex. Talking about how to develop their knowledge and the pupil’s wishes andborders in relation to this topic. We talk about how to handle in certain circumstances. I amconvinced this simply decreases youngsters getting exposed to traumatic situations or sexualmisbehaviour.Smart politicians support Healthy SchoolsPoliticians are easily shocked by figures about suicide rates, fighting, drugs andalcohol abuse, obesity, sexual promiscuity and the difficulties in schools. However,usually it is hard to convince them to put long term investment into processeswhich do not show immediate results since politicians are elected for relativelyshort periods.Using the ‘maximising their potential’ message was the way we were able to getlocal politicians on our side. Rotterdam is a big harbour city with poor levels ofeducational attainment for young people and a high rate of school drop-out. We34