Shropshire school wins award for healthy initiative

The John Wilkinson Primary School in Broseley have been awarded with the county award for improvement in physical activity and health enhancing activities by Energise, a national initiative which works across the country to get people into health and fitness.

The award is given to schools that have increased children's participation in sport and headteacher Jacqui Carter said they have put in a lot of work to make the school an overall more healthy place.

"We employed a higher level physical education teaching assistant and a healthy schools teaching assistant," she said.

"The programme is about encouraging children to get involved as well as allowing them to develop it themselves - they gave suggestions of what they wanted to do.

"For example, we have a gardening group who grew their own fruit and vegetables and then cooked and had a meal together with the food they grew.

Wonderful

"We also had a scooter initiative and built a scooter park so a lot of students now scooter to school. There are lots of activities held at break times and we have bikes children can use."

Mrs Carter said she is very proud of the staff involved and the way students have reacted.

"I think that the team of staff that pushed it forward have done a remarkable job and it had made a real difference to children," she said.

"They have targeted children who's participation was low and worked with them. I am very pleased to have won the county award."

Suzy O'Shea, from Energise, said: "We encourage healthy eating and living and one of our focuses is working with schools and making them as active as they can be. The initiative is across the whole of England.

"Each primary school gets money from an initiative that they put towards increasing these aspects. The award is recognising schools that are using the money for the best outcome. The work John Wilkinson Primary is doing is wonderful and we are very proud to give them this award."