Pupil Health & Well-Being — an Education Priority 4 Europe’s Schools Erasmus Project

Project Title

Pupil Health & Well-Being — an Education Priority 4 Europe’s Schools

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for school education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Pedagogy and didactics; Health and wellbeing

Project Summary

From nursery to university, education must constantly evolve and change its priorities to ensure Europe’s future citizens are the happy, healthy, well prepared future workforce we need. In recent years, as traditional social structures have weakened, the role of the school has become even more relevant in this respect. Developing the ‘whole child’ has become more important than the traditional focus on delivering a narrow curriculum of pure, academic subjects. Meanwhile, concern about the health and well-being of Europe’s citizens is growing as economists note the financial implications of an increasingly less active, less healthy, longer living population. Our ‘obesity crisis’ is repeatedly referenced as a future economic risk to European success.

Bringing together these 2 issues was the focus of our project. How can educators develop the traditional role of schools to focus more firmly on Health and Well – Being and ensure we foster positive, ‘inclusive’ experiences of physical education and healthy eating? How can schools encourage positive attitudes in all pupils and set them on a path to fitness for life and a healthier, more productive future?

The task begins with up-skilling current and future teachers to lead the attitudinal change we require from all educational sectors. This project sought to do that by bringing together a number of high achieving schools, aware of this need to ‘educate for life’, as well as Universities with a Teacher Training remit–including a focus on training Physical Education teachers.

The partnership consists primarily of a University and 2 schools in each of three countries–the UK, Spain and Greece. (An additional partner of a UK university based fitness facility adds additional expertise and resources to complement the other UK partners and brings the total number in the partnership to 10.)

The group agreed a 2 year work-plan of collaboration in order to exchange knowledge, bring more focus to the Pupil Health & Well – Being agenda and develop joint resources. 4 joint, transnational meetings and a program of on-going local activities to strengthen education were planned and carried out. Joint activities between the schools and Universities involved were supported.

Ongoing research, knowledge sharing, the development of resources and dissemination & evaluation took place as the partnership worked together to develop 6 training modules, which the 3 University partners have planned to incorporate into their teacher training. The modules focus on teaching and learning styles, developing a school culture of well-being, behavioral change, cultural influence and inclusion in schools, as well as more traditional aspects of physical education. They also formed the foundation of our final year training event, following our last transnational meeting—a trial run for an ongoing in-service course offer for school staff across Europe, to be offered year on year following the project’s end. This annual course will be advertised on the EU Erasmus + Key Action 1 course database and be self-funding, with each of the 3 countries involved hosting it in turn if possible, and with a transnational partnership cohort delivering.

All lesson plans & resources produced by the project are offered free to those who take part, as well as generally via the project web site, which will be funded to continue for a minimum of 5 additional years.

The schools involved are high achieving & focused on ‘education for life’. Generally, they succeed in areas with high levels of deprivation. The Universities are all long standing trainers of future teachers with different approaches to the tutoring of general teachers as well as specifically to the development of future Physical Education teachers. We combined these approaches to develop the most coherent training possible for current and future teachers, allowing them to begin the process of expanding the remit of their teaching and their schools to focus more effectively on establishing healthy patterns of living. This was initially within the organizations in the partnership, but over the life of this project, spread locally via local dissemination activities and finally, we hope will spread across a wider European area as the end products are disseminated via our ongoing delivery of our European in-service course for school staff.

Methodology was designed & the results of our project were apparent early on in the practice of the institutions collaborating. Curriculum changes in our partner Universities and a whole school focus on Pupil Health in our partner schools were supported. Longer term change in other institutions and regions will cascade into the future (and current) teachers have already benefited from the training developed and the innovative and inclusive approach to whole school engagement with Health and Well – Being which we believe our focus and our end product outcomes can support.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 173060 Eur

Project Coordinator

John Donne Primary School & Country: UK

Project Partners

• Club Pulse, Goldsmiths
• 1° Protypo Peiramatiko Gymnassio Thessalonikis
• LONDON SOUTH BANK UNIVERSITY LBG
• CEIP de Marpequeña
• ARISTOTELIO PANEPISTIMIO THESSALONIKIS
• UNIVERSIDAD DE LAS PALMAS DE GRAN CANARIA
• Alfred Salter Primary School