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Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing
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New Child of the North Report - An evidence-based plan for supporting physical activity and healthy nutrition with and through education settings

28 May 2024
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Photograph of school children with school dinners

The fifth report in a year-long series – produced jointly by Child of the North and the Centre for Young Lives – that seeks to deliver a country that works for all children and young people, calls for schools to be supported to fix the broken school food system and tackle Britain’s child obesity crisis.

The report, An evidence-based plan for supporting physical activity and healthy nutrition with and through education settings, makes a series of recommendations which if implemented will help tackle the child obesity crisis and mend the broken school food system. It argues that schools should be crucial environments for boosting healthy eating and physical activity and highlights overwhelming evidence on the need to empower schools to devise their own whole-school approaches in collaboration with their local communities.

It warns that the evidence is overwhelming and unequivocal – the health of children and young people in the UK is getting worse, and children’s education, health and wellbeing is being affected by inactivity and unhealthy diets.

The report urges Government to:

  • Establish whole-school approaches for physical activity and healthy nutrition, bringing together health and education to better support childhood health and wellbeing. Every school should be able to tailor its own approach based on its unique local circumstances.
  • Support schools to deliver an ethos where the health and wellbeing of pupils is central to teaching practices and the wider school environment, and encourage Ofsted to recognise schools that emphasise the importance of activity and healthy eating.
  • Support schools to work alongside local Higher Education institutions, to draw on research expertise, including expertise on physical activity and healthy nutrition, to highlight the most effective interventions and use local and national data to guide good practice, in coordination with local communities.