Curriculum for Excellence - HMIE/LTS Good Practice Conferences
Adam Ingram Keynote Address
Good morning everyone. I’m delighted to be here today to kick off this conference on healthy food in schools, “Celebrating success and rising to the challenge.” As Minister for Children and Early Years, I’m very pleased to lend my support to all the excellent work that Scotland’s schools and local authorities have been doing and continue to do, to provide and promote healthy school food and to build health promoting school environments. This work is already making an impact and will undoubtedly contribute to a healthier future for Scotland.
So I’d like to begin by thanking you and congratulating you for your efforts. You all deserve every credit for making Hungry for Success work. And I know it hasn’t been easy, I’ve got kids myself and I often find it very difficult to get them to eat what they should eat. But we also know from HMIE’s second progress report on the implementation of Hungry for Success that there is still work to be done, particularly in secondary schools. And that is what today is all about: to support and challenge local authorities and schools through sharing good practice, to continue working to make sure all our schools are up to the standards we expect. And I hope that the seminars and discussions today will provide inspiration and new ideas to try in your schools and local authorities
Included in the Scottish Government’s vision for Scotland is that we live longer, healthier lives. We believe that a healthier Scotland is essential if we are to realise our central purpose of creating a more successful nation through increasing sustainable economic growth, where we can all flourish. As a government we want to build on the successes of Hungry for Success, not just in schools but beyond the school gates and in the wider community. The Schools’ Health Promotion and Nutrition Scotland Act will help us achieve that, building on the solid foundations of Hungry for Success and health promoting schools policy.
Now, the act places Scotland at the forefront in this area. We are one of the first nations to focus on the importance of diet and health promotion in schools and to bring coherence and integration to a range of food and health issues, which link to the economy, education, health and environmental stewardship.
I realise the biggest choices young people have to make about food aren’t actually made in school. Changing school food is not enough by itself. Educating children about healthy eating and healthy living is vital and that’s why the health promotion duty in the act is equally if not more important. In May, we issued health promotion guidance to help local authorities and schools in working with partner agencies to meet the health promotion duty in the Health Promotion and Nutrition Act.
This guidance, along with the draft experiences and outcomes for health and wellbeing, as part of Curriculum for Excellence, sets out our expectations that schools help children and young people develop an understanding of the relationship between diet and health and wellbeing. The health promotion duty in the act requires local authorities and schools to develop health promotion strategies and plans. Local authorities must show leadership and support schools through the introduction of a whole authority approach to health promotion to ensure a consistent approach across the authority. School improvement plans should set out a vision for health promotion and support the transition to the new nutritional requirements.
These strategies and plans should also involve the wider community and reflect how families can become engaged. The role of parents is, of course, hugely important and we hope that parents will support the lessons that parents take home from school. But schools alone cannot change the eating habits and health of future generations. Winning over the hearts and minds of the people of Scotland will be key to continuing this revolution and we are taking action across government to ensure that the good work in schools is supported beyond the school gates.
Earlier this year the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning and the Minister for Public Health launched the Healthier Scotland Cooking Bus, and the cooking bus will travel the country, encouraging a greater understanding of food and health issues by teaching healthy, practical cooking skills, not only to school pupils but also teachers, parents and community groups across Scotland. So this will complement health promotion plans and the Curriculum for Excellence experiences and outcomes for health and wellbeing, which among other things, seek to ensure our young people become more confident when choosing, tasting and preparing healthy food.
Our national food and drink policy provides us with an opportunity to support schools by taking healthy eating messages into the community. Wider healthy and sustainable food choices by industry and consumers alike are being examined under the next steps of this policy. And we need the food industry to continue to rise to the challenge, to continue to innovate and develop more products that kids want to eat, but meet the high standards that we’ve set.
Now, the Scottish Government is determined to provide the leadership that is required to improve our diet and health in Scotland, and I have mentioned some of the action we’re taking. But the health and wellbeing of our young people is a responsibility we all share. Bringing about cultural change through education in schools and embedding this message into the community is a strategy where Scotland is already leading. By working together we can continue to rise to this challenge and achieve our aim of a healthier Scotland. Our children and young people deserve nothing less.
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