What the Essential Award is and how your school can achieve it.
The Essential Award gives an overview of key Healthy Schools topics.
To get the Essential Award, you'll need to carry out key actions to:
- increase pupils' physical activity
- make sure school food is healthy
- support pupils' mental health and wellbeing
How long it takes to do the Essential Award
We recommend that you complete the application within one year, so that your answers stay up to date.
Start working towards the Essential Award
Use our online system to:
- see the award criteria and guidance
- tell us you're starting to work towards the essential award
- send us evidence of your work
- track your progress
- submit your finished work
Download the award criteria for:
- pdf Primary School (419 KB)
- pdf Secondary School (421 KB)
- pdf Through Schools (Both, Primary and Secondary) (373 KB)
How we support you
We'll:
- work with you and with your school nurse, giving guidance over email
- provide a directory of advice, guidance and resources
- give extra support to schools working in the most deprived areas or with the most vulnerable pupils, we'll contact you to arrange this
Download documents to help you complete the award.
How we assess your work
We'll look at your work and compare it to the award criteria. We'll let you know if we you need to do more work to get the award within 4 weeks of you submitting your work
What you'll get
When your school achieves the Essential Award we'll:
- send you a certificate
- send you digital logos that you can add to your website or letterheads
- add you to our Healthy Schools website, so your local community and other schools can learn about the work your staff and pupils did to earn the awards
You can also work towards specialist awards.