Fairfield High School (FHS) is honoured to be the first secondary school in Bristol to be recognised for achieving the Physical Activity Badge as part of the council’s Healthy Schools Awards.

In order to meet this prestigious title, FHS showed a clear commitment to increasing student physical activity, removing barriers to engagement in sports and encouraging students, staff and families to travel actively (an impressive 79% surveyed travelled to school via either bike or walking).

Sharon Davies, PE teacher and Year 9 Achievement Coordinator at FHS explained:

“Being awarded this badge is an accolade for us at Fairfield, as we work tirelessly to ensure that physical activity is high on every agenda.

“We’ve risen to the challenge of lessons being taught solely behind classroom desks; our Maths and English Departments in particular make efforts to make lessons more active, thus benefiting both physical and mental health. We also run a whole host of extra curricular activities to suit everybody’s taste and fitness levels, such as an outdoor gym and table tennis.”

The Healthy Schools Team goes on to say:

“The school have worked hard to reduce known barriers, such as gender stereotyping. For example they have focussed on promoting stereotypically male-orientated sports to female students by establishing a girl’s rugby team and taking female students to Bristol Flyers basketball games and the Cricket World Cup. They also showed the Women’s World Cup on their big screen.”

The Physical Activity Badge is one of a series of awards which are offered by the Healthy Schools team to recognise the outstanding commitment towards improving the health and wellbeing of pupils.  There are eight awards included in the scheme which cover local and national health priorities including healthy eating, keeping active and promoting positive mental health.

The overall aim of Healthy Schools is to ensure the next generation is as healthy as possible so to prevent future ill health or disease. The scheme includes the Mayor’s Award for Excellence which recognises those schools that want to go for excellence and focus on overall health rather than one topic area.  More information can be found on the council’s website.