Thank you to everyone for taking the time to respond to our consultation survey regarding a school Healthy Eating Policy.
90% of families agree with our school implementing a Healthy Eating Policy.
During the next step of the process the school staff will redraft the policy taking parental feedback into consideration.
Mr. Mc Donald and Ms. Kennedy will then attend a seminar run by the HSE regarding healthy eating in schools and seek feedback on our draft school policy on December 7th.
Following this, the Board of Management will ratify the policy and we should be ready to launch our Healthy Eating Policy in full in January 2023
Please also note the following that may answer some questions that arose during the parental feedback process;
- Food Dudes is a healthy eating programme supported by the Department of Education and The Department of Health. We can only take part in it when we are notified that it is our turn. Having recently participated in the programme our school will have to wait before this is rolled out to us again. More information on Food Dudes can be found here
- DEIS stands for Delivering, Equality in Schools. The DEIS programme is the Department’s main policy initiative to respond to educational disadvantage. The DEIS programme focuses on targeting additional resources to those schools included in the programme to ensure every child has an equal opportunity to achieve their potential. One of the ways that the Department of Education ensures an equal opportunity to pupils in DEIS schools is to provide school lunches to the pupils. We cannot provide this service as we are not a DEIS school and therefore are not funded to engage with school lunch providers. The Department of Education decides if a school is DEIS or non DEIS. More information can be found here
Our school staff will now redraft the policy using the HSE Healthy Eating Policy Toolkit for Primary Schools.
In the meantime we ask that parents make their best effort to send their child to school each day having eaten the healthiest possible breakfast and with the healthiest possible school lunch for their child.
Thank you,
Conor Mc Donald
Principal