Ecole Primaire du Mas

France

The breakfast activity:

Co-constructing towards establishing a good partnership between families and school.

Focus Area

Education to food and taste, Strengthening and promoting the partnership with pupils’ families

Target Group

3 to 6 years old

By Pascale Rolland, school head and teacher at Ecole maternelle du Mas, Firminy, France

Purpose of the flexible classroom

We designed our project with the following objectives in mind:

- - To enable schoolchildren to enjoy and have access to free breakfasts, so that they don’t start the day hungry, stay concentrated throughout the morning and learn in the best possible conditions.
- - To acquire good eating habits and develop their taste awareness.
- - To prevent obesity.
- - To work on strengthening the partnership between the school and pupils’ families.

Educating pupils to healthy eating was also one of the aims of our school project. The idea was to bring parents into the school and involve them in the process of promoting healthy eating by offering a free breakfast to all children and parents who wanted to take part, on a regular basis. Parents were able to help us prepare and set up the breakfast, which we all ate together. After that, there were also discussions, with guest speakers on the subject of healthy eating and food. A dietician and the League against Cancer were involved as partners. We also proposed activities to the children on taste, preventing food waste, and the cultural dimension of food. The project brought together the school’s teachers, parents, the local council and its staff, the community centre and a number of local associations. It received financial support from the Ministry of Education and the municipality.

Preparation Phase

At the start of the project, we carried out an evaluation of our school, based on the training courses and the Rapid Assessment tool proposed. In November and December 2022, we worked on building our project. In January 2023, we identified potential partners and thought about how to communicate about the project.

About Ecole maternelle du Mas

Ecole maternelle du Mas is a state nursery school which welcomes approximately 110 pupils, aged between 3 to 6 years old. It is situated in Firminy, a small town in the Loire, near Saint Etienne. The town has no schools classified as priority zones, but its population is fragile in some areas, with little social diversity. As the municipality of Firminy had decided to focus particularly on children’s health, the SHE4AHA project was proposed to them, and then, to us.

Implementation

In January 2023, we also started to teach classes about food and taste. At the end of February-March 2023, the breakfasts were launched in the school on the Fridays before the school holidays. Then in 2024, implementation was carried out in 2 stages:

Stage 1: during Taste Week, breakfast was offered with the help of the families. Every day a different culinary culture explored based on the families’ backgrounds and origins. Taste Week took place from 16 to 20 October 2023 (the week before half-term).

Stage 2: the day before each school holiday from December 2023, we also organized a breakfast.

Evaluation

No internal evaluation was formalized within the school, as the local district inspector had decided to conduct their own evaluation.

Project results

Feedback from colleagues was generally positive. And we’ve seen that parents were really getting involved. They have given us some very positive informal feedback, which encourages us to continue with this project.

Challenges

We had to face one main challenge in the process of our project. Indeed, the educational advisors who were with us from the outset left and were replaced. So, the dynamic changed. The school team had to be the real driving force behind the project.

Facilitating Factors

The involvement and support of the municipality, the community centre, the local educational advisors and the local district inspector (in the first year) were the main promoting factors. Positive feedback from families was also a driving force. Finally, I would also say that teamwork and the impetus we gave within the school were decisive.

Training

The training courses were interesting overall. They gave us a better understanding of the issues and the theoretical aspects involved regarding Health promoting schools.

SHE School Guide

It’s a concise document that covers the essentials of the health-promoting schools approach. But it needs to be accompanied by a facilitator, if you’re not familiar with this approach. Indeed it’s too long and too theoretical. We essentially worked with the Rapid Assessment Tool presented to us in training, to identify what was already being done in the school, and to meet colleagues’ needs. This enabled us to focus, to organize and to summarize.

Recommendations

- - It’s essential to rally a team around your projects. You need to identify motivated, dynamic people to kickstart your project.
- - Partnership between the school and the families is essential. We need to cultivate communication and relationships, and work together.
- - Strong institutional will, commitment and support are paramount, both at national education level and at local authority level, to establish creative and fruitful exchanges and dynamics.
- - Schools need to be supported in their efforts to become health-promoting schools.
    Future teachers should be trained in this approach.