Mountainview High School
- School location Timaru
- School decile 6
“To succeed, you need to have management on your side” – National Heart Foundation coordinator
The school ethos and organisation
The principal has shown his support by helping draft the school’s food and nutrition policy. He has encouraged staff to be aware of their own health and to model healthy behaviour, and also ensured the new canteen contractor would support the school’s move towards healthier eating.
The school’s food and nutrition policy reflects these changes. Aimed at students, staff, team managers/coaches, visitors, and food contractors, it is intended to: create awareness about healthy lifestyles and good nutritional choices; ensure a whole school approach to healthy eating; and provide attractive and nutritious food at a reasonable cost to encourage customers to make healthy food choices.
The policy stipulates that the links between nutrition, exercise, and well-being must be regularly communicated, and that food fundraising must be consistent with the school’s healthy eating environment. It says that breads, cereals, and fruit and vegetables must be promoted in line with the School Food programme, and that menu and price changes must be approved by the Canteen Committee.
Curriculum programmes
Health is a priority at Mountainview High School; it is one of only a few schools where every student in years 9 to 12 is taught health. Because Mountainview has ‘always embraced opportunities’, it took full advantage of the support offered by the National Heart Foundation’s school food coordinator to kick-start its work to improve the food and nutrition environment.
Co-curricular health promotion opportunities
There are changes outside the canteen as well, with the health promotion philosophy found throughout the school. The food technology teacher has seen an improvement in students' food choices in her class, such as using low-fat and calcium-enriched milk, and wholemeal bread. In class, she emphasises the importance of choosing healthy food ingredients such as choosing margarine instead of butter, yellow or green milk rather than blue, baking instead of frying, and using wholemeal flour and bread, and more vegetables and fruit.
The school and community environment
One of the biggest challenges for the canteen manager has been to get buy-in from the students about healthy food. To do this, a variety of healthy foods are offered. To avoid excessive amounts of wasted food, smaller quantities are prepared and the canteen manager tries to plan in advance. She also works hard to find healthy foods that are financially viable and students will eat. She says, “We run a business, but we do have a social conscience.” The school’s open door policy means people can make suggestions about the food, and students have been surveyed to identify their preferences.
The canteen managers have worked closely with suppliers to encourage them to provide healthier foods at a lower rate, and are now working with them to obtain foods that fit within the Food and Beverage Classification System.
A major step forward has been ensuring that only healthy fundraising takes place at school. Selling chocolate is no longer considered acceptable, even though the chocolate was regarded as an ‘easy sell’ and it made the school a lot of money. Although it is now costing students more to go away on sports trips, the sports coordinator does not see this as a bad thing because it means that students have only to be more creative with their fundraising efforts.
School and community partnerships
With the Canteen Committee leading the way, the school has made subtle changes to its food and nutrition environment over time, to make it more sustainable. Made up of teachers, a student, the principal, the sports coordinator and the canteen manager, this committee provides an open channel of communication between the school and canteen managers. It has instigated many changes, including removing fizzy drinks and deep-fried foods from the canteen and introducing healthier options, and not permitting takeaways to be brought on to the school grounds.
The National Heart Foundation coordinator helped this committee to make its initial needs assessment in a realistic way, covering issues such as the type of food being promoted, the need for the canteen contractor to make a profit, unhealthy foods that needed to be removed, and how the canteen could be made more attractive – for example, being made bigger, and addressing problems with queuing.
