Active Mile

What is an Active Mile?

In line with the government’s Childhood Obesity Plan (external link), Haringey Council is encouraging primary schools to adopt an Active Mile initiative. An Active Mile is an easy and simple initiative that encourages children to jog or run around the playground, school buildings, or local park, ideally every day in school. An Active Mile takes around 15 minutes desk-to-desk to complete and doesn’t require a change of clothes or extra equipment.

Why are we encouraging it?

Supporting schools to launch their own Active Mile is a key priority for the Haringey Healthy Schools programme as this type of initiative has been shown to improve the health and wellbeing of children. Building this kind of activity into daily school life can be instrumental in helping to reduce childhood obesity and can also improve educational attainment.

Resources

To support schools in adopting an active mile, Haringey Public Health has developed the following resources:

• Haringey Active Mile Information for Schools (PDF, 4.6MB)
• Haringey Active Mile - Parents' FAQs (DOC, 218KB) - template letter to give to parents
• Certificates to celebrate children’s Active Mile achievements, which recognise participation in:
  • Active mile certificate of achievement 10 miles (DOC, 202KB)
  • Active mile certificate of achievement 30 miles (DOC, 202KB)
  • Active mile certificate of achievement 190 miles (DOC, 204KB)

Haringey Healthy Schools network meeting

The Spring Term Healthy Schools Network on the 5 February 2019 focused on supporting Primary Schools to introduce their own Active Mile. Key supporters of the Active Mile initiative in Haringey spoke at the network meeting, including Dr Eli Sefi, Paediatric Consultant, Tottenham Hotspur Foundation and the Haringey Active Communities and Leisure team.

We also heard three informative case studies from schools who are already successfully running their own Active Mile initiative – St Martin of Porres Primary School, Bounds Green Primary School, and Ferry Lane Primary School.

• Spring Term Healthy Schools Network Presentation (PDF, 1.1MB)

Healthy Schools Awards

Introducing an Active Mile initiative provides an opportunity to achieve a Silver Healthy Schools London award (external link). The silver award involves planning how the Active Mile will be introduced into the school. For further support, please contact Haringey Healthy Schools using the below email address.

If you are currently participating in an Active Mile, or thinking of participating, please get in touch by emailing Healthy.Schools@haringey.gov.uk

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