Good Health and Wellbeing: Exploring Curriculum for Excellence

This blog post was written by Stephanie, a Primary Education student. This blog post will explore the impact of Curriculum for Excellence, and how the encouraging students learning will lead to better health and wellbeing. Which will consequently result in the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 3 - Good Health and Wellbeing. 

The education sector aims to attain all of the sustainable development goals throughout a child’s time in education. SDG3 ensures people live a healthy life and promotes good wellbeing. Within education there are many policies and frameworks which assure the attainment of good health and wellbeing. 

Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) is the national curriculum used in schools in Scotland, with the main focus being to improve education. In order to achieve this goal, four key capacities have been developed: successful learners, confident individuals, responsible citizens, and effective contributors. By ensuring that children meet these four capacities, this will push them to achieve their greatest potential (Education Scotland, 2021). 

A key framework of the curriculum is "Getting it Right for Every Child (GIRFEC)". This framework places children to be the main focus of their learning, whilst providing support for the children and their families. There are eight wellbeing indicators involved which ensure that all aspects of children’s development are covered. The indicators can commonly be known as SHANARRI: 

Safe, Healthy, Active, Nurtured, Achieving, Respected, Responsible, Included. 

When children are provided with these key indicators this allows the child the best possible chance to achieve their full potential. Furthermore, these key indicators lead to a guaranteed protection of their health and wellbeing. By providing a child with a safe space, and a heightened sense of security this will lead to an improved mental health. Furthermore, physical health is practiced during core P.E lessons, and healthy eating is heavily promoted throughout schools in different subject areas.  Encouraging inclusion for all children and creating different responsibilities encourages children’s self-esteem and confidence and thus supports their mental health immensely (Scottish Government- A, 2021).

The children and young people Scotland act 2014 is part of GIRFEC. This legislation has a strong focus on the early developmental years and encourages early intervention and preventative measures with an aim to reduce aspects such as behavioural problems or to even identify learning difficulties sooner. It is a legal requirement for services to work together in supporting  young people and their families. Families are receiving better support due to services working together, inequalities within the classroom can also be reduced as parents are supported throughout their children’s learning and therefore this can help avoid issues such as neglect (Scottish Government - B, 2021).

Achieving our Potential, Equally Well and Early Years Framework are all policies in place to try and tackle the income inequality in Scotland. Support for children living in poverty or poor income households is provided through  breakfast clubs and free school meals for all children in primaries 1-4. Households with poorer incomes receive this support right through to primary 7. Equally well is widely available for everyone and provides strong support for pregnant women and young children. The biggest problems in a child development can be identified as; substance misuse, neglect, poverty, and disease. Equally well provides solutions to tackle these problems and identifies related legislations. It promotes pregnancy and baby groups to new or soon to be mums as they encourage you to support one and other. These groups create more positive interactions for babies with strong brain stimulation which encourages development within the child. (Scottish Government- C, 2021).

 United Nations Convention of Rights of a Child (UNCRC) is followed by all policy frameworks and legislations and is strongly embedded within the curriculum. Children’s health and wellbeing is the main focus of these rights. These rights entail;  being able to live, education, protection from harm, good standard of living including clothes, food, and shelter (The Convention on the Rights of the Child, 2021). Children will learn their rights throughout their time in education however it is down to the teacher and the families to ensure these rights are being protected. 


It is hopeful that the implementation and use of these educational policies will prove to be effective in tackling and eventually contributing towards the achievement of SDG3. 

References
Education Scotland. 2021. What is Curriculum for Excellence? | Curriculum for Excellence | Policy drivers | Policy for Scottish education | Scottish education system | Education Scotland. [online] Available at: <https://education.gov.scot/education-scotland/scottish-education-system/policy-for-scottish-education/policy-drivers/cfe-building-from-the-statement-appendix-incl-btc1-5/what-is-curriculum-for-excellence> [Accessed 5 February 2021].

Scottish Government 2021 - B. Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014: National Guidance on Part 12: Services in relation to Children at Risk of Becoming Looked After, etc - gov.scot. [online] Available at: <https://www.gov.scot/publications/children-young-people-scotland-act-2014-national-guidance-part-12/pages/3/> [Accessed 5 February 2021].

Scottish Government 2021 - C. Equally Well Implementation Plan - gov.scot. [online] Available at: <https://www.gov.scot/publications/equally-well-implementation-plan/pages/2/> [Accessed 5 February 2021].

Scottish Government 2021 - A. Getting it right for every child (GIRFEC) - gov.scot. [online] Available at: <https://www.gov.scot/policies/girfec/> [Accessed 5 February 2021].

Our World in Data. 2021. Goal 3: Good Health and Well-Being - SDG Tracker. [online] Available at: <https://sdg-tracker.org/good-health> [Accessed 5 February 2021].

Unicef.org. 2021. The Convention on the Rights of the Child: The child-friendly version. [online] Available at: <https://www.unicef.org/sop/convention-rights-child-child-friendly-version> [Accessed 5 February 2021].