Planning and audit

In Leadership and management, we identified that a health committee chaired by the school's health coordinator could take responsibility for a health audit. The following stages can help the process along. 

Purpose of the audit

You have to be clear about the purpose of the audit since this will have an enormous bearing on the process. For example, do you want to audit all the aspects of the health promoting school, or just one section? 

Identifying audit tools

The Quality Indicators and National Care Standards incorporated in Word file: The Health Promoting School (136KB) (HMIE, 2004) self-evaluation tool should be considered in the audit process.

We have provided three audit tools based on the main themes from Health Promotion Issues for School and Councils - A report by HM Inspectors of Schools (1999), which will help schools to identify where their priorities will lie within the three main areas: 

• Word file: Curriculum audit (75.5KB)
• Word file: Informal curriculum audit (133KB)
• Word file: Partnerships audit (55KB)    

These audit tools could be: 

• distributed to all staff with a completion date (ideally a week)
• given out as part of in-service or continuing professional development (CPD) training on health promoting schools
• completed by a select number of staff
• accompany a free healthy eating lunch in the staff room.    

Timescale

The timescale has to be realistic and manageable. Set a completion date for each stage of the process – an action plan may help. 

Analysing information

Information should be analysed by the school health committee. Your local health board may also be able to help the process. 

A one-page summary of results is helpful for staff and can help to identify areas for action. 

Action

Think small! Your audit may identify a range of action points, or there may be an area where it is clear that more work is required. 

Ideally you should start small, with one project that the health committee is willing to work on, for example: 

• facilitating a parents workshop
• setting up a pupil council
• a healthy eating day.

Small projects can help you to identify processes, resources and challenges and provide an ideal testing ground for more long-term projects. 

Monitoring and evaluation

This is an important part of health promoting school activity and can help to progress practice. More information can be found on the Monitoring and evaluation page.