Health Promoting School

With the support of the HSE, St. Malachy’s Girls’ School will aim to become a Health Promoting School.  A health promoting school can be characterised as a school which is constantly strengthening its capacity as a healthy place in which to live, learn and work.

The school recognises that a healthy school refers to the social, emotional, mental, spiritual, cognitive and physical health of every pupil.  This is a long-term initiative and will involve the entire school community, in a whole school approach to health and wellbeing.

Benefits of a Health Promoting School

According to the ENHPS (2002), the most successful outcomes for Health Promoting Schools arise from programmes developed through collaboration between health and education sectors. In particular, the Egmond Agenda (2002) describes the importance of partnerships within and between stakeholders involved in the development of HPS. This includes ministries (Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education), their institutions, pupils, parents/guardians, teachers, NGOs and other parties/agencies in local communities.

Ongoing evaluations of the European Network of Health Promoting Schools have identified the following benefits:

• Better learning results for pupils

• More done to promote staff health

• A co-ordinated approach to social, physical and environmental needs

• Increased pupil self-esteem

• Lowered incidence of bullying

• School environment is safer and more secure

• Better understanding of schools’ health aims

• Improved relationships within the school

• More involvement of parents/guardians

• Better use of outside agencies

• Pupils receive better quality education

The results of our recent Health Promoting School surveys show that parents would like the school to address the following;

▪ Overall Wellbeing            ▪ Healthy Eating                   ▪ Physical Activity

19th November 2019

Monica Mc Crory (Senior Health Promotion Officer) presented the Health Promotion Flag to the Health Promtion Committee

The Health Promoting School Committee

Staff Representatives:  

• Karen Tuite, Dearbhla Greene

Parent Representative:  

• Carrie Moonan

Pupil Representatives:  

• Sadhbh Branigan and  Hannah Toal (Third Class)
• Sophia Mozgova and Jane McGee  (Fourth Class)
• Kaisha Lavery and Aoife Cosgrove (Fifth Class)
• Toni Olowookere and Anna Thompson  (Sixth Class)