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OBS De Ontdekking from Hoogezand won the Golden Carrot Seed with a video during School Garden Week (8–12 April 2024). As a prize, they won 500 euros, which they used to purchase tools for their newly started school vegetable garden. Teacher Jacquelien Doornbosch talks about it in an interview with Alliantie Schooltuinen.
On Wednesday, July 3, the 2024 Healthy Smikkel Weeks were officially launched. The Netherlands’ largest vegetable program for primary school-aged children has demonstrated through three previous editions that eating vegetables is fun, tasty, and important. Half of all adults and 1 in 7 children are overweight; this calls for greater attention to healthy nutrition. Around 70,000 children, at home and at after-school care centers, are taking part this year in the healthy initiative of the Spoony Foundation. A summer full of vegetable challenges, games, and recipes, on the way to a healthier lifestyle and future.
Over the past few weeks, dozens of schools took part in the ‘From grey to green’ competition organised by Praxis Doe-Het-Zelf Center B.V. and Jantje Beton. The three winners have now been announced: Basisschool Op Weg (Haarle), 1e Montessorischool (Alkmaar) and JFK Montessorischool (The Hague). The organisation will contact them before the summer holidays.
When it is part of an integrated approach, municipalities can use the measurement of motor skills as a basis for improving them. It is important that the municipality creates support among schools and establishes clear objectives and follow-up steps. This is shown by case studies conducted by Marthe Westerbroek, Sofie Vreeswijk and Amika Singh of the Mulier Institute in nine municipalities.
Online gambling is prohibited for minors. Yet 1 in 15 secondary school students gambles online for money. This is shown by the 2023 ScholierenMonitor conducted by the Trimbos Institute: a recurring study into substance use, digital behaviour and mental health in primary and secondary education (ages 10–16). The monitor further shows that vape use among school students is high, nitrous oxide use has declined and the use of other drugs has remained unchanged compared with previous years.
The EU School Fruit and Vegetable Programme has once again been recognised by the Centre for Healthy Living of the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM). It has even risen to the level of ‘First indications of effectiveness’. EU-Schoolfruit, which is assessed every five years for quality, feasibility and effectiveness, meets the established criteria for effectiveness.
Wednesday, September 25 is National Tap Water Day. This day focuses on tap water as a healthy and sustainable thirst quencher. A super fun and educational program has been created especially for primary schools and after-school care. Will you take part in National Tap Water Day? Register by September 11 at the latest and receive the Tap Water Day posters by mail!
On 1 July, the national commemoration of the abolition of slavery takes place in Amsterdam’s Oosterpark during the Keti Koti Festival. Do the children or young people you work with in education have questions about the history of slavery or the colonial past? If so, use these tips from the Netherlands Youth Institute to discuss the subject.
From 10 to 15 June 2024, Healthy Youth Week took place. During this week, JOGG, together with municipalities and partners across the Netherlands, draws attention to an environment in which everyone can grow up healthy. Because a healthy future starts with a healthy youth. JOGG looks back on the week.
Would you like to work on wellbeing, nutrition, physical activity & sports and/or relationships & sexuality in the coming school year, and thus promote a healthy lifestyle among your pupils or students? Then sign up for the Online Healthy School Activity Fair on 17 or 18 September. You will get to know various Healthy School activities for these themes in primary, special and secondary education, and vocational education.
On 12 June, the seventeenth edition of National Outdoor Play Day took place, an initiative of Jantje Beton and Nickelodeon. More than 100,000 children at nearly 700 locations in the Netherlands took part. The launch took place in Gouda.
Examining wolf droppings, looking for tracks, feeling earthworms. On 19 June, 133 pupils from a primary school in Dieren went on an adventure in De Veluwezoom National Park in Rheden. For some children, this initiative by OERRR and the Youth Education Fund was their first introduction to nature. Over the next two years, the organisations aim to give at least 10,000 children the opportunity to experience nature.
There is a new version of Smaaklessen. Just as fun and tasty as the previous version, but with new lessons, new recipes, completely up to date again, and in a new look.
Drinking enough is important. Do you often choose soft drinks or juice as a thirst quencher? Then bear in mind that you also consume a lot of sugar this way. For your health and your teeth, it is better not to drink these sugary beverages too much or too often. Are you wondering how much sugar that involves? The Netherlands Nutrition Centre has created a new overview of popular drinks.
Gezonde School looks back with pride on 2023. The positive results of previous years continued. More and more schools in the Netherlands are working to promote a healthy lifestyle using the Gezonde School approach.
The new government formed by the PVV, VVD, BBB and NSC does not need to set aside funding for structural financing of school meals when elaborating its outline coalition agreement. On 11 June, the House of Representatives rejected a motion to that effect.
“Imagine a school class. A group of children, ready for the lesson. There could easily be seven young carers among them.” Aniek de Lange is a Youth Project Officer at the Trimbos Institute, with expertise in children of parents with mental health and/or addiction problems. In a blog on the Trimbos website, she explains why it is important that these children feel seen and heard at school. She also gives education professionals tips on how to recognise young carers.
From 2 to 13 September*, all primary schools, special (primary) education schools and special (secondary) education schools can register for the EU School Fruit and Vegetables Programme 2024–2025.
Healthy School has awarded 1878 grants to schools in primary education, secondary education, secondary vocational education and specialized education under four schemes: Healthy School Support, the Healthy Relationships & Sexuality Incentive Scheme, the Healthy and Safe Working Incentive Scheme, and the Tasty Outdoors Incentive Grant from Young Learning to Eat. The various incentive schemes enable schools to provide an extra boost to a healthy lifestyle for their pupils or students. Because more applications were submitted for all schemes than the available budget allowed, selection criteria were applied.
Media Literacy Week 2024 will take place from 8 to 15 November. Preparations are getting underway, and we need your help! Want to learn more about the theme, the campaign and how you can contribute? Join the digital kick-off on Thursday, 27 June 2024.
IVN Nature Education is organizing the first edition of the Week of Nature for primary schools from 10 to 16 June. Around 50,000 pupils from nearly 1,000 schools will learn something new every day about common animals and plants, such as the great tit and the stinging nettle. The theme of the special nature week is ‘Friends for life’, based on the idea that children who know a lot about nature will also take better care of it. “And that is desperately needed at a time when many species are not doing well,” says project leader Vincent van der Veen.<p>Numerous studies have shown for years that biodiversity is rapidly declining, and it recently became clear that more than half of primary school children in the Netherlands feel little or no connection with nature. As far as IVN is concerned, the fact that around 1,000 schools are taking part in the first edition of the Week of Nature sends a clear signal to the new cabinet that the quality of nature education must be improved. “Education is currently being whittled down to focusing only on mathematics and language. But we do not want pupils to only be able to calculate when the world will end; we also want to prevent that from happening together.”</p><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/X4rgqD9BiUU" allowfullscreen="true"></iframe><p><strong><br /></strong><strong>Outdoor adventures</strong></p> <p>With the Week of Nature, IVN hopes to raise awareness of the importance of nature education. Children who know a lot about nature and regularly spend time in it will grow more fond of it and also take better care of it later in life. During the Week of Nature, intended for pupils in grades 4 through 7, children will therefore spend plenty of time outdoors. Participating schools have received a teaching package that enables them to get started every day in the schoolyard or nearby. The focus is mainly on discovery-based learning and going on adventures themselves – what is actually crawling under that paving stone? Van der Veen: “Learning about nature should primarily take place outdoors. A real great tit makes a much greater impression than one in a book.”</p> <p>What is flying through the air? What is crawling underground? What lives above ground? And what can you find in the water? Using these themes, pupils will marvel at some of the animals and plants in Dutch nature during the Week of Nature. IVN is collaborating with the Vroege Vogels programme (BNNVARA), which has the same goal with its ‘Expeditie 10’ initiative: to bring as many pupils as possible into contact with the animals and plants living near them, thereby fostering a love of nature.</p> <p><em>IVN has <a href="https://www.ivn.nl/aanbod/week-van-de-natuur/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a special theme page</a> about the Week of Nature. Schools can register there, and a programme is available. Answers to frequently asked questions can also be found there.</em></p>
Speedy Bites are simple healthy snacks consisting of a combination of vegetables, fruit and herbs. Children prepare them playfully and quickly in three to five minutes between playing and exercising. This makes Speedy Bites easy to use during activities and events at and around the school and in the neighborhood. Moreover, they fit perfectly with Skillz2Grow’s mission: food education for every child. ‘
Representatives of the Youth Education Fund, the Netherlands Red Cross, food banks and the Netherlands Nutrition Centre are calling in an urgent letter, on behalf of more than 2,100 participating schools and 350,000 participating children, on parliamentary spokespeople and ministers from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment, the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, and the Ministry of Finance to ensure that school meals remain financially possible after 2024.
An estimated ten percent of children and young people in the Netherlands fall victim to cyberbullying. That is the conclusion reached by Remco Spithoven and Cathy van Tuijl, lecturers in Social Safety and Early Childhood Education at Saxion University of Applied Sciences, in their book Cyberbullying. According to them, parents often have no idea what is going on, even though the consequences of online bullying are often more serious than those of offline bullying.
Around 37 percent of Dutch primary-school-age children sometimes complain at home about their school playground. This is according to a survey of one thousand Dutch fathers and mothers commissioned by Jantje Beton and Praxis and conducted by Motivaction. According to approximately half of the parents surveyed, their children’s playground consists of too many paving stones and does not have enough greenery. For this reason, the DIY chain and Jantje Beton are joining forces to make school playgrounds greener.
Every year, Stichting School & Veiligheid organizes Anti-Bullying Week to help schools work toward a safe and friendly group. The theme for Anti-Bullying Week 2024, which takes place from 23 to 27 September 2024, has now been announced, along with the following slogan: ‘Think FF first! When it comes to gossip’.
In almost one in five participating children (18.2%), undesirable patterns in motor development were observed. This is the outcome of a recent, long-term study conducted as part of the Start(V)aardig project. The project examined the motor skills of 1,128 children between the ages of 4 and 6. Two objectives were central. First, to describe and quantify the natural motor development of preschoolers, and second, to identify undesirable developmental patterns.
During National School Breakfast Week from 11–15 November 2024, children throughout the Netherlands will sit down at school for a healthy breakfast and a fun lesson about the best start to the day. This is how children learn in a festive way how important it is to eat a healthy breakfast every day. Registration is now open.
An estimated 30,000 children and young people in the Netherlands are affected by long Covid, a reality that too often remains unnoticed. While these young people face the consequences of this condition every day, there is an urgent need for recognition and support. To address these challenges and raise awareness, the Stichting Zorgeloos naar School, in collaboration with Kinderen met LongCovid, has published the brochure ‘Your Student with Long Covid’, aimed at teachers.
As an education professional, you probably recognize this: the pupils or students who feel good about themselves are often the ones who do well at school. They have done their homework, make friends easily and exercise regularly. You can help your pupils or students feel better about themselves by investing in social and emotional skills. This helps improve their well-being, which in turn contributes to better functioning at school. How does this work? Pharos and Trimbos explain it in an article on the Gezonde School website.