Speeches
Speech by Ms Grace Fu, Senior Minister of State, Ministry of National Development and Ministry of Education, at the 2008 CHERISH Award Ceremony on Thursday, 26 June 2008, 10.30am at Nanyang Polytechnic
Mr Lam Pin Woon Chief Executive Officer, Health Promotion Board
Ms Ho Peng Director, Curriculum Planning & Development Division, MOE
Mr. Wong Siew Hoong Director, School Division, MOE
Principals, Vice Principals
Ladies and Gentlemen
Good morning.
The New Era of Health Promotion in Schools
I am delighted to be here today to recognise schools for their CHampioning Efforts Resulting in Improved School Health (CHERISH). This occasion marks the beginning of the new joint HPB-MOE CHERISH Award. In this new joint award, schools are recognised for their efforts towards health promotion.
As we prepare our students for the future, cultivating life-long healthy habits is an integral part of their physical and mental development. To be effective, efforts to health promotion must be sustained. The benefit of such sustained hard work however is tremendous as we believe that it will have a life-long impact on the physical, mental and emotional health of the students and teachers. A school with healthy students and teachers will in turn be a more conducive environment for teaching and learning.
A total of 313 primary, secondary and pre-university schools applied for CHERISH validation this year. It gives me great pleasure to announce that 2 schools are awarded platinum, 30 schools are awarded gold, 123 schools are awarded silver and 134 schools are awarded bronze. I would like to congratulate the staff and students for their commitment to and effort in maintaining a high standard of health promotion in their schools.
Synergistic Partnership between HPB and MOE in Health Promotion
HPB and MOE are leveraging on each other’s resources and expertise to promote healthy lifestyle to a common target audience; that is, our schools. We are partners in supporting schools in their health promotion efforts through various programmes and resources. Through health promotion programmes we aim to raise awareness and encourage students, staff and parents to adopt a healthy lifestyle. Examples of these programmes are wellness programmes for teachers, health seminars for parents and competitions for students. Funding is made available through the Youth Advolution for Health programme (YAH) for secondary and pre-university students to lead in initiatives that would influence their peers.
The Joint Award gives recognition to schools that have adopted effective health strategies. And by sharing them with the other schools, we hope to encourage other leaders and teachers to bring health promotion in our schools to greater heights.
Schools in Action for Health Promotion
Promoting good health practices in schools is a continuous process that requires sustained and concerted efforts from all stakeholders—students, staff and parents. Our ultimate goal is to see students and staff taking ownership of their health proactively by embracing health lifestyle on a long term basis. The following are three examples of how school staff, students and parents support the effort of health promotion in schools.
At Loyang Primary School, school leaders, teachers and parents worked closely with one another in the Health Promotion Committee to create a healthy setting in the school. As the saying goes, ‘An apple a day keeps the doctors away.’ The committee in Loyang Primary adopted the apple as a metaphor to symbolise the school’s commitment to health promotion. Images of apples around the school served as a visual reminder for everyone to stay healthy. Another programme introduced by the committee is the ‘Breakfast at Loyang’ programme. This unique programme enabled busy parents to spend quality breakfast time with their children and interact with their children’s teachers before going to work, two days per week. This programme is able to develop students’ physical health—that is by ensuring that they get a good nutritious breakfast in the morning ; to develop their social-emotional health as eating breakfast together allowed children to bond with their parents and for parents to get to know their children; and to promote better parent-teacher engagement as parents interact with teachers regularly over breakfast. As one would expect, this programme was well received by everyone.
Students could also play an integral role in promoting health amongst their peers. In Balestier Hill Secondary School rides on the power of peer influence to lead in promoting health. The Secondary 3 students put into practice the knowledge they have acquired in Food and Nutrition lessons. They took on the role as Health Ambassadors to guide, motivate and encourage their peers to eat balanced meals and exercise regularly. It was health promotion of students, for students and by students.
Our school health programmes should also include our staff as their well-being is equally important to us. In Anderson Junior College, health promotion of staff is well assimilated into the college’s vision and mission. Despite a very packed JC curriculum, staff took time to engage in health-related activities. Time is set aside for staff to use the gymnasium, and yoga sessions, talks and workshops are organised for staff. These sessions have benefited the staff in many ways; improvement in physical health, in mental health by de-stressing and an improvement to staff morale and attitude towards work.
Conclusion
Our schools play an important role in promoting health and building healthy lifestyles of students and staff. Only then can our students and staff be in a good position to contribute positively to the society and choose to live life to the fullest. Thank you for contributing to the well-being of our students and staff. I hope that you will learn more from one another and in turn also do more for the future of our people in health promotion. May I wish all schools the best in your health promotion journey and my heartiest congratulations to the winning schools.
Thank you.