Healthy High 5 Award for secondary schools

This star is about increasing the amount of physical activity children do during their school day and encouraging healthy habits outside of school.

The Daily Mile

In The Daily Mile, pupils walk, skip, jog or run a mile around the playing field, outdoor playground or school hall. Doing this to music can really help with participation and engagement.

You do not have to sign up to the website, track within your school if you prefer, just work out how many times round the field, playground or area is a mile and off you go!

This can happen at any time during the school day, during break or lunch times, before or after assembly or linking in with tutor time or lessons (in addition to PE).

Since March 2020 there has also been a host of new online workouts and resources which will get children and young people up and moving.

Government guidance states children should do 60 minutes of physical activity every day. 30 minutes of this should happen in the school day. Participating in physical activities at school reduces childhood inactivity and obesity.

When physical activity forms part of the day children often eat better, sleep better and it can help encourage their family members to be active together. It can also help improve children’s focus, their readiness to learn and build stronger relationships, with children often helping and encouraging their peers.

Physical activity also improves perception of exercise, and promotes the idea of self-care. In addition to building their self-esteem and confidence, children spend more time outside, in almost all weathers, helping them become better engaged with the outdoors and aware of nature.

The Golden Mile

The Golden Mile is a safe, simple and free initiative accessible to all age groups regardless of ability.

Pupils walk, skip or jog around a Golden Mile track within the safety of the school grounds and then use the downloadable resources to upload and track their achievements. Here is Hampshire Schools and Bassett Green Primary School students showing off their Golden Mile skills.

Achieving the physical activity star

The Daily Mile, The Golden Mile, or alternative exercise should be in addition to PE classes and be undertaken three times per week for 10 minutes to meet the full standards of HH5. Alternative physical activity can be offered to help keep the children interested and engaged throughout the day.

For more information

• The Daily Mile
• NHS physical activity guidelines for children and young people
• Childhood obesity: a plan for action
• Childhood obesity: applying all our health
• UK Chief Medical Officers' physical activity guidelines
• Energise Me coordinate The Golden Mile for Hampshire and the Isle of Wight and The Daily Mile Foundation both offer support to schools wanting to implement their schemes. For example, with The Golden Mile, children will be offered encouragements such as wrist bands when they have completed a certain number of miles

Southampton City Council has linked in with schools to encourage parents and carers to walk with their child to school, or park the car away from the school and walk the rest of the journey. Even five or 10 extra physically active minutes on the way to school, or after school, can help keep children healthy, improve concentration, and reduce levels of local air pollution.

Being ‘mindful’ means being calmly aware of your body and mind by focusing on the moment. Mindfulness means to focus on ‘now’. Developing concentration, increasing focus attention and listening skills, and relaxation are parts of mindfulness. Mindfulness is not associated with religion.

Purpose and benefits

Improving concentration and listening skills, refocusing the mind and encouraging relaxation to help support emotional health. See the Young Minds website, which also has details specifically about coronavirus advice and mental health support.

Achieving the mindfulness minute star

Schools can achieve the mindfulness minute star by introducing mindfulness to pupils on a very basic level, such as by encouraging them to use senses like touch, taste, smell, sight and hearing. This could be done as a whole school before or after assembly or used as a class-based approach to help refocus the class after or before an activity. It could also be useful after break or lunch period.

For more information

• Youth Mindfulness – A project that delivers courses in mindfulness to children in schools. Testimonials and feedback are available on the website
• Mindfulness in Schools – Though it does not deliver mindfulness directly in schools, this project provides training to adults to teach its mindfulness courses to children and young people in schools
• Research links
• Every Mind Matters Campaign - Part of the Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education (PSHE) curriculum to KS2, KS3 and KS4

Hydration is particularly important for children and young people, as they have higher water requirements in relation to their body weight than adults.

Children do not always recognise the early stages of thirst, which can make them particularly vulnerable to becoming dehydrated. This is especially true during times of increased body fluid loss, for example when they are playing sport or during warm weather.

• Dehydration, even if only mild, can cause:
• Tiredness
• Headaches
• Lethargy
• Lack of concentration
• Reduced mental performance
• Dry skin

Keeping hydrated can also help prevent constipation – visit ERIC for more information. Research suggests adequately hydrated children may have better performance in school.

If you are concerned that your child is not drinking enough or excessively thirsty, please seek advice from your School Nurse or General Practitioner (GP).

Children should aim to hydrate with plain, natural drinks that are unsweetened and free from additives. Drinking water, as opposed to other drinks, can also help prevent tooth decay.

Health concerns have recently emerged with regards to energy and high-sugar fizzy drinks. The report childhood obesity: a plan for action chapter two highlights the unsuitability of energy drinks for children and young people, with their very high caffeine and sugar content contributing to childhood obesity and dental problems. In addition to contributing to obesity levels in children, consuming high levels of caffeine can lead to palpitations, high blood pressure, nausea, vomiting and in severe cases, convulsions. It also reduces insulin sensitivity, which can increase the risk of type two diabetes and negatively affect children and young people’s neurological and cardiovascular system.

In most situations, water is a healthier choice than energy or fizzy drinks. Drinking water can also help to prevent tooth decay.

Achieving the star

Schools should help provide children with access to drinking water throughout the day, during lunch times and break times. Designated staff members should record the frequency with which water is provided to children and young people and send this data to the HH5 lead on a termly basis. A school nurse may also make an unplanned visit and do spot checks.

Schools should encourage drinking water and staff members should role model drinking water as a way to keep physically healthy and promote good dental care. Schools should also educate students as to how fizzy and energy drinks affect the body as well as the health benefits of drinking water. This element fits in well with the Young Health Champions scheme. Learn more about the Life Lab scheme and how pupils can take part and help educate their peers.

Vending machines containing energy drinks and fizzy drinks are not permitted on school premises.

For more information

• Free water refills points rolled out to cut waste - BBC News
• Visit the British Nutrition Foundation (BNF) website, which includes a healthy hydration guide

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has developed the below set of fluid requirements for children of different ages.

This star encourages schools to provide students quicker access to healthier foods in the canteen and to make more affordable healthy options available for students in the canteen.

Children and young people are more likely to make healthier food choices if they are more accessible. They are also more likely to purchase healthier options if they are affordable and not more expensive than less healthy choices.

Achieving the healthier lunch options star

Schools can earn this star by ensuring healthier food options are more visible and accessible within the school canteen and education within the school programme of the positive impact healthier choices can make on health.

Consider meeting with your chefs, cooks and catering supplier all together. How can the menu reflect a greater variety of healthy foods, swapping healthier foods for some of the less healthy options? Are the healthier foods displayed and more clearly and promoted within the menu?

Talk with your catering suppliers to see what healthy foods can be offered at a price in line with the rest of the menu to encourage better uptake from pupils. To earn this star schools must demonstrate improvement and maintain these improvements.

Two thirds of adult smokers start before age 18 and people who start smoking younger are more likely to become highly addicted smokers. This star encourages pupils to think about how to keep their bodies healthy, in particular their lungs. Schools can promote awareness of how smoking affects our health and the health benefits that exercise and keeping physically active have on our lungs.

Here are just some of the reasons not to start smoking:

• You will be healthier and less out of breath because smoking decreases your lung capacity
• You will save yourself a lot of money. Use the Quit Smoking app to keep track of how much you are saving
• You will look better. Chemicals in cigarettes restrict the blood flow to your skin. Smokers have more wrinkled and saggy faces by the time they are in their mid-20s
• Quitting helps save the planet. Deforestation due to tobacco production accounts for nearly 5% of overall deforestation in the developing world
• If you start smoking when you are in your teens, get ready for stained teeth, wrinkly skin and a one-in-two chance of dying early
• Someone who starts smoking at 15 is three times more likely to die from cancer than someone who starts smoking in their mid-20s
• The younger you start smoking, the more damage there will be to your body as an adult
• Not smoking will instantly make you more attractive. Most people prefer kissing non-smokers!
• Smoking can harm your fertility and, if you are female, it increases your chances of complications during pregnancy and labour. Smokers' babies are also more at risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)

Achieving the love your lungs star

The easiest way to gain this star is for the school to engage with the Life Lab programme. However this star can also be linked to the curriculum and particularly sits well with biology and PE subjects.

Peers presenting findings to each other and linking in with the Life Lab programme can help peer-to-peer support and education, which is known to be very powerful. Encouraging simple changes such as walking to school in the morning, trying to increase the number of steps taken in a day, and accessing sport within school can all help keep pupils healthy.

Pupils should be exposed to a form of quitting smoking information once a term.

For more information

• Action on Smoking and Health - Young people and tobacco
• Health and Social Care Information Centre, 2015 - Smoking, drinking and drug use amongst young people in England
• NHS Choices - Under 18s guide to quitting smoking