Victoria high school student Lauryn Morley (left), Deputy Premier and Health Services Minister Shirley Bond, Education Minister Tom Christensen (centre) and Richard Stewart, MLA for Coquitlam-Maillardville, take a refreshing drink of water at the health-promoting schools forum in downtown Vancouver in January.

The Province has launched an ambitious plan to make B.C. schools centres of health promotion – something parents will appreciate, and students will enjoy. It’s a part of Premier Gordon Campbell’s commitment to make B.C. students the healthiest and most physically active in Canada by 2010.

We’re investing more than $15.5 million in a comprehensive plan for schools that means more physical activity and healthier food choices for students of all ages.

Included is:

• More than $14.5 million over five years for Action Schools! BC, a best-practice physical activity program designed to help schools create their own action plans to promote healthy living.
• An action plan to promote healthy food and to discontinue sales of unhealthy food in B.C. schools within 4½ years.
• An awards recognition program for B.C. schools that will be designed to echo and support the spirit of the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games and help build positive attitudes toward lifelong physical activity.
• $220,000 over three years to implement the Framework for Health-Promoting Schools.
• $300,000 over three years to support the Pan Canadian Joint Consortium on School Health. Together with Prince Edward Island, B.C. is leading a national consortium focused on school health.

Educators, health professionals, parents, students and municipal leaders met in Vancouver on Jan. 14 for the first provincewide forum to promote health in B.C. schools. Participants worked on the draft framework for Health-Promoting Schools, which will be completed this spring.

Action Schools! BC

A key component of the plan to promote student health will be an expansion of Action Schools! BC. The program will be expanded to grades K-9 provincewide by 2010, and a secondary school model is also being developed.

Action Schools! BC was piloted in 10 Lower Mainland schools in grades 4 to 7 for 17 months. Teachers found that children who were more physically active learned better, and that increasing time spent on physical activity did not reduce achievement.

Research showed that children in Action Schools! BC improved aerobic fitness by 39 per cent, compared with 17 per cent of children in control schools that did not schedule Action Schools! BC activities. Children in Action Schools! BC gained more bone mass (2.6 per cent more in girls and 2 per cent more in boys) than children in control schools.

The foundation for B.C.’s plan to promote heath in schools stems from a recommendation in the provincial health officer’s 2003 report: An Ounce of Prevention – a Public Rationale for the School as the Setting for Health Promotion.

“The school setting provides a unique opportunity to significantly and positively influence the many domains of student health in and outside the classroom setting,” says Dr. Perry Kendall, B.C.’s provincial health officer.

No more junk food

By working with school districts and other parties to promote healthy eating, we’re committed to discontinuing the sales of unhealthy food in schools within 4½ years. B.C. is also introducing new standards for physical education, the first of their kind in Canada, with performance descriptions of physical activity.

The curriculum for students in kindergarten to Grade 10 is also being revised with a stronger focus on health. Complementing that will be an awards recognition program for B.C. schools designed to echo and support the spirit of the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, and to build positive attitudes toward lifelong physical activity.

Parents are a child’s first teacher, and healthy lifestyles begin at home. But the Province is doing its part by making sure students have the opportunity to be physically active in school so they can achieve their best.