Canadian Healthy School Standards

Previously published in Volume 87, Issue 2

Wellbeing is essential, transcending all aspects of our lives: socially, academically, physically, emotionally and spiritually.

Since March 2020, students in Canada have experienced significant challenges to their wellbeing, with the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbating existing issues and creating new pressures. In 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, only 55% of children in Canada reported a sense of wellbeing, and 27% reported feeling sad or hopeless for long periods of time (Hospital for Sick Children, 2021). Since then, the mental health of our young people has worsened, on average. When the Hospital for Sick Children explored the mental health impact of COVID-19 among children 2-18 years of age, over 70% reported worse mental health during the initial COVID-19 lockdowns. One concerning finding from studies on childhood wellbeing is the significant proportion of otherwise healthy school-aged children who experienced deterioration in the past two years in a number of mental health domains, including depression (37.6%), anxiety (38.7%), irritability (40.5%) and attention span (40.8%)(Hospital for Sick Children, 2021). Moreover, the 2020's have begun like no other decade, with devastating wildfires, heat waves, civil unrest and race-based violence adding to young people’s concerns. It is clear that NOW is the time to put children's wellbeing first.

Schools are the only social institution with the ability to reach virtually all children. Regardless of gender, age, ability, culture, religion, or socio-economic status, schools provide a prime opportunity to support children and youth equitably. It is well known that wellbeing is a precondition for learning. It stands to reason that wellbeing and health promotion at school is not just an opportunity to reach everyone, but a necessity to help children reach their optimal learning objectives. The Healthy School model is a critical and timely solution as the education system grapples with how to move forward in supporting student health and wellbeing.  

On June 22, 2021, UNESCO and the World Health Organization (WHO) launched a global campaign for Health[y] Schools (WHO, 2021). In keeping with the Canadian Healthy Schools Alliance’s consensus statement, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated that “schools play a vital role in the wellbeing of students, families and their communities, and the link between education and health has never been more evident.” UNESCO Director General, Audrey Azouley, takes this one step further and states that “A school that is not a health[y] school is no longer justifiable and acceptable,” calling for all of us to affirm our commitment and role “to make every school a health[y] school.”

The Promise of Healthy Schools

In Canada, many schools use the internationally recognized Comprehensive School Health framework. This model, or its Healthy School equivalents (e.g., Health Promoting Schools, the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child Model, Healthy School Certification program, Holistic Model) support and encourage young people's academic, physical, mental, emotional, social and spiritual development within aspects of school and learning. Comprehensive School Health is a model that acknowledges the joint responsibility of the school and broader community for the health of students, staff and families who are part of a school. A Healthy School Community does not live only within the walls of the school building. It extends into a community that brings all levels of administration and support together to truly affect change across the school system (meaning, a school board, district or jurisdiction), with the goals of supporting the health and wellbeing of all students within that community. A Healthy School Community must be built on partnerships and collaboration among all members of the community, including parents/caregivers, Elders and Knowledge Keepers, teachers, public health representatives and—most importantly—students. Healthy Schools acknowledge that educational spaces are not limited to only literacy and numeracy but encompass a (w)holistic vision; it's in the quality of the relationships that are built, the calm that you create where new learning can happen, and where new memories get laid down (Canadian Healthy Schools Alliance, 2021).

The evidence supporting the scaling of this framework in K-12 schools is compelling (Rodger, 2018). Research has identified extensive benefits of Healthy Schools, including: improvements in mental wellbeing; resilience, self-esteem and self-confidence, staff wellbeing, physical activity, cultural safety in learning environments, sense of belonging, engagement and deeper connection to school communities, internalized values such as responsibility and empathy, grounding in and appreciation of one’s environment, academic success and vegetable and fruit consumption; and decreases in bullying, school absences, tobacco and substance use and sedentary behaviour. Now more than ever, as provinces and territories grapple with recovery from the impacts of COVID-19, we can’t afford not to take Healthy School models to scale.

Opportunities to Evolve the Model

But before we can expand Healthy School models, we need to acknowledge the inequities inherent within Canada’s colonial educational systems and public institutions. Kike Ojo-Thompson, Canada’s leading practioner on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion speaks extensively on this topic and states that the legacies of racism, colonization, slavery, patriarchy and heteronormativity have been baked into to our educational systems and frameworks (Ojo-Thompson, 2019).  

Dr. Susan Rodger, Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at University of Western Ontario, identified that in writing the Canadian Healthy School Standards, “we must intentionally deconstruct and drive our work to ensure that we continuously question whether our work meets the needs of some, most or all” (Rodger, 2018). 

To achieve this, the Canadian Healthy School Standards were developed by the Canadian Healthy Schools Alliance, and co-authored by a group of leading national and regional organizations, cultural knowledge holders and experts. Together through a process that spanned over a year, they sought to uncover, understand and address aspects of the model that needed to evolve in order to ensure Healthy School models better meet the needs of all students. Specifically, they sought to produce an evolved framework that:

• is responsive and applicable to the diversity of school communities across Canada 
• centres equity, diversity and inclusion 
• acts on truth and reconciliation
• focuses on strengths and assets within schools and surrounding communities rather than needs or deficits
• takes a systemic approach to creating a climate of wellbeing within schools in order to create more sustainable outcomes, as opposed to implementing one-off or fragmented interventions
• engages and holds accountable all levels within the school system, including policy-makers and those sitting at strategic planning tables

In doing so, the authors’ hope is that the benefits of healthy schools are experienced more deeply and widely.

Shifts promoted within the Canadian Healthy School Standards

The Canadian Healthy School Standards (the Standards) aim to spark conversations and be a tipping point where the school community comes together to elevate wellbeing in schools in a way that: 

a. Reinforces specific accountability and processes for taking a systemic approach to enhancing wellbeing in schools

School communities, school system leaders, policy-makers and other interest-holders can use the Canadian Healthy School Standards to catalyze leadership and action on elevating student and staff wellbeing, increasing student success, and engaging the whole school community in creating a school climate that supports wellbeing.  

School System Leaders (e.g., Superintendents, Directors of Education, Trustees, Mental Health Leads, etc.), in particular, have a crucial role to play in creating the organizational conditions that encourage school health to take root. Organizational conditions can include policies, processes and investments that promote wellbeing for all members of the school community. School System Leaders can influence healthy schools development through a number of levers available to them, such as:

• Demonstrating a clear commitment to providing system leadership for Healthy Schools.
• Establishing a clear vision, shared by their administration team, with Trustee endorsement, that “every school is a healthy school”, in order to provide clear direction and support to in-school teams focusing on healthy school development.
• Ensuring a Healthy Schools Lead or Champion has been identified at the school system level, as well as within each school.
• Embedding wellbeing in decision-making across the school system, using it as a lens through which options are weighed and policies are created.  Accountability for the healthy school vision is then created by including Healthy Schools in Board Improvement Plans and Operational Plans.
• Ensuring policies related to school health and wellbeing are paired with sustainable investments and resources.
• Supporting in-school teams with finding resources and partners to support their healthy school actions, opening doors and troubleshooting, being aware of the actions within schools, reviewing and reflecting on what worked well and insights for the following school year. 

b. Builds on existing work

The Standards seek to build on, rather than replace, existing Healthy School approaches, and provide a starting point to move from one-off health-related activities towards a comprehensive, system-wide approach to creating an environment that supports wellbeing across schools. The shift is subtle but meaningful. The Standards endeavour to evolve the Healthy Schools model to be more adaptable to all contexts across Canada, and to make Healthy Schools actions more sustainable by embedding them within the fabric of a school community or school system. While one-time initiatives hold value in addressing the specific goals of a school, such as increasing physical activity levels or healthy food consumption, or expanding mental health supports, the Standards advocate for positioning these initiatives within a broader context - a healthy school climate, and a school system that promotes health and wellbeing at all levels. 

The Standards advocate for schools and school systems to build on what is working well, aligning Healthy School planning with existing work within a school and considering multiple, interconnected actions that support wellbeing for all school community members.  School system leaders can help their in-school teams build on existing work by confirming that Healthy School team members are connected to separate but related strategies and initiatives within the school system, so that synergies can be found. This can provide a supportive team for the Healthy School Champion to work alongside, and boost the impact and visibility of Healthy School actions by pairing them with other strategic actions (e.g., strategies related to staff wellbeing, mental health, Indigenous education, equity and inclusive education, student voice, Safe and Accepting Schools, and Positive School Climate).  

When schools take a systems approach to creating an environment of wellbeing, they increase the impact of their activities, address the broader environment of the school that will facilitate or hinder health promotion and wellbeing initiatives, and minimize teacher and Administrator workloads by reducing duplication in in-school and district-level initiatives. By taking a systems view of health and wellbeing within the school system, these interrelated strategies can reinforce each other in a positive feedback loop. 

 
c. Centres equity, diversity and inclusion

The Canadian Healthy School Standards were influenced by the global awakening that has uncovered the inequities inherent within Canada’s colonial educational and public institutions. 

Racism and discrimination do not only impact students, but Black, Indigenous and racialized teachers as well. According to Rohan Thompson, Wellness and Workplace Equity Manager with Peel District School Board, “it impacts their sense of belonging, sense of safety, mental health and opportunities for promotion. This can lead to increased stress and anxiety, which can negatively impact teacher performance. Teachers who are under chronic stress have been shown to have less effective classroom management strategies, lack clear teaching instruction for students and have a lower ability to create safe and nurturing classrooms for their students. Teachers and educators who experience racism in the  workplace, have the stress that comes with being a teacher and the additional stress and anxiety of having to cope with racism in the workplace.” Mr. Thompson, drawing on the 2015 report from the Ontario Alliance of Black School Educators, suggests it is vital that schools and school boards get serious about dismantling racism and discrimination in their schools.  It will lead to better teacher performance, increase sense of safety for Black, Racialized and Indigenous educators, reduce staff turnover and positively impact student experience”. Mr. Thompson goes further to state that “we cannot have healthy schools without centering anti-racism” (Davis, 2021). 

The Standards advocate for frameworks and activities that are culturally relevant and affirming rather than ‘race neutral’. They centre equity, diversity and inclusion, and truth and reconciliation, as key foundations for any action aimed at system-wide wellbeing, recognizing that we cannot have healthy teachers or students without creating healthy school environments that consider the impacts of power and authority within the education system and society at large. Furthermore, the Standards call on school systems to champion the diversity within schools and communities as a strength, asking ourselves how our school systems have contributed to equity, inclusion and anti-oppression; and consulting, engaging and sharing power with Black, Racialized and Indigenous students, family members and school community members.

Healthy schools practitioners can expand anti-racism in their work through professional development. School system leaders and educators have power and privilege associated with their roles. Acknowledging this is a critical and important first step and requires us all to examine our personal history, our pedagogical beliefs and approaches, our knowledge of diversity, equity and social justice issues, our understanding of the students and families in our school communities, and the biases and assumptions that impact our beliefs and decisions (Davis, 2021). As Dr. Benedicta Egbo, Professor, University of Windsor states: “Those with power are frequently least aware of—or least willing to acknowledge—its existence. Those with less power are often most aware of its existence.” One significant way to centre anti-racism in healthy schools work is to ensure that decision making is shared with the school community, including students, parents, cultural and community leaders, rather than using a ‘top down’ approach where decision-making authority is held by a few.

d. Acts on Truth and Reconciliation

The new Canadian Healthy School Standards were years in the making. Much time was taken to ensure that the Standards would be grounded in multiple ways of knowing.  

As Dr. Pamela Rose Toulouse, Indigenous scholar, shared through the Canadian Healthy School Standards: “A Healthy School centres (w)holistic health and wellbeing in its policies, its curriculum, its people, its relationships and its environment, and is particularly attuned to valuing and promoting a systemic approach to creating a climate of wellbeing across schools; integrating policies with action at all levels; and taking a strengths-based approach to enhancing health and wellbeing, leveraging the unique protective factors within the local community and environment.”

In Indigenous communities, wellbeing is linked within the Medicine wheel, as well as Pimatisiwin (Good living—Cree) and Netaklimk (Living well—Mi’Kmaq). Through these depictions of wellbeing, common threads of interconnectedness, connection to the land, (w)holism and balance are present. Thomas Doherty has offered the Anishinaabe view of the four directions. Attending to all four directions (north, south, east, west) with mutual respect for one another’s feelings and thoughts can be the drawing point of commonality that drives the relationships that are formed and built upon in Healthy Schools. By using empathy and understanding, embracing the unknown and working together, we can better achieve a safe and comforting environment for educators and students. Rather than ascribing to a eurocentric approach focused on intervention and prevention, or view of health as the absence of illness, the Standards conceptualize health and wellbeing through a (w)holistic, Indigenous, inclusive orientation which focuses on the “relationships and responsibilities held across the environment, families, the tribe and ancestors” (Tagalick, 2010).
 
In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission finished its six-year investigation into the Canadian residential school system and published a series of reports that illustrate the lasting effects of Canada's colonialism and suggest paths for moving forward. Education is addressed in Calls to Action 6 to 12, and Physical Education and Sport are addressed in Calls to Action 87 to 91. It is important that the Calls to Action be read in their entirety, because addressing the systemic effects of colonialism and racism is an ongoing, intersectional practice. This is both a legal and moral obligation. 

Acknowledging and carrying out the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada will begin to create an environment where all students are taught to honour each person and the land upon which they live, and to value broader ways of knowing, understanding, and navigating changes. This understanding helps create an environment of safety where Indigenous learners can thrive. The Canadian Healthy Schools Standards provide success stories of schools weaving multiple ways of knowing, learning on the land, and reconciliation into their daily actions and their approach to creating a welcoming and respectful community for all learners.

e. Supports staff wellbeing

The Canadian Healthy School Standards were not created in a vacuum; rather, they were developed amidst a growing call for attention to the wellbeing of staff in schools. One of the subtle but meaningful shifts included in the Standards is an explicit focus on teacher/educator wellbeing, positioning it as an essential condition for any Healthy School. 

Staff wellbeing only flourishes within a context of intentional action, dedicated and sustainable funding, and time, where wellness is supported by school leaders (e.g., Principals) and school system leaders (e.g., Directors of Education, Superintendents, Trustees) and modelled by employees at all levels. There is growing awareness and acknowledgement that staff wellbeing can’t be the sole responsibility of individual employees, but must be positioned within a set of organizational conditions and a school climate that promotes wellbeing. 

School districts are increasingly focusing on strategies to improve teacher/staff wellbeing. The Standards offer another entry point to staff wellbeing, to complement and bolster a chorus of actions within education systems aimed at creating healthy school environments for all school community members.

Leaders are being encouraged to look at what can be taken off a teacher’s plate, before healthy school activities are added on. Teachers can also be supported in their healthy schools work by ensuring they are given access to job-embedded, quality professional learning opportunities related to Healthy Schools as well as equity, diversity, inclusion and Truth and Reconciliation. 
 
The Alliance is seeing more and more schools including teacher wellbeing activities in their Healthy School plans, and celebrates this type of whole-school thinking.

Looking Forward

The vision of the Canadian Healthy Schools Alliance is that “every school in Canada is a Healthy School.” The Canadian Healthy Schools Standards position Healthy Schools as a model that every school can see themselves in, with a goal to widen and deepen the impact of Healthy Schools models across Canada. System transformation at this scale requires every school system leader, school community member and interest-holder leading Healthy School actions from where they stand. The Alliance is putting out a call to action for every school community member to come together to transform learning spaces to better support health and wellbeing for all members of the school communities across Canada.

References
Canadian Healthy Schools Alliance (2021). Canadian Healthy School Standards. Ottawa, Ontario. Available at: https://www.healthyschoolsalliance.ca/en/resources

Davis, M. (2021). Return to School 2021: Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. PHE Canada.
 
Hospital for Sick Children website. Posted February 26, 2021. “New research reveals impact of COVID-19 pandemic on child and youth mental health.”  Retrieved from https://www.sickkids.ca/en/news/archive/2021/impact-of-covid-19-pandemic-on-child-youth-mental-health/#:~:text=We%20asked%20about%20the%20mental,%2C%20irritable%2C%20anxiety%2C%20stressed

Ojo-Thompson, K. (2019, Nov). “Equity & Healthy School Communities: You Can’t Have One Without the Other.” Canadian Healthy Schools Forum 2019. Accessed from https://phecanada.ca/sites/default/files/content/docs/HSCForum2019/Session%20PDF/Keynote_Kike%20Ojo-Thompson_HSCForum2019.pdf

Rodger, S. (2018, July). “Ponder This – Reaching the Margins.” Presentation to the Canadian Healthy Schools Alliance.

Tagalick, S. (2010). A Framework for Indigenous School Health: Foundations in Cultural Principles. National Collaborating Centre for Aboriginal Health. 

World Health Organization (WHO). (2021). “UNESCO and WHO urge countries to make every school a health-promoting school”. Available at: https://www.who.int/news/item/22-06-2021-unesco-and-who-urge-countries-to-make-every-school-a-health-promoting-school

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2012. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action.