Enablers and barriers English secondary schools face in promoting healthy diet and physical activity behaviours.

There has been little research done in secondary schools to understand how to promote healthy lifestyle behaviours to adolescents (secondary schools provide secondary education for students aged 11­18 years). COVID-19 has brought the importance of maintaining a healthy weight back into sharp focus and schools are an ideal setting to educate and support young people in making healthy diet and activity choices. This research sought to understand how important school staff thought creating a health-promoting culture in schools was, how they could create such a culture and what support they had or needed to do so. From interviews with school staff, observing school activities and a questionnaire to parents, we found that schools and parents believe that schools have a role to play in supporting healthy diet and physical activity behaviours although they identified many pressures that prevent making health promotion a priority; these include time and resources as well as a lack of government policy. The importance of having a head teacher with a belief in the benefits of a healthy lifestyle was recognized. The way secondary schools are structured in England makes a joined-up approach difficult and requires central planning and coordination. More support, including resources and policy commitments, are needed to support secondary schools to create a healthy school environment.