This page begins a discussion of the history and evolution of school-based and school-linked human development programs around the world. In this summary, we will discuss world wide movements that have articulated lasting concepts and enduring approaches to school health promotion, community schools, safety in schools, inclusive schools, education for sustainable development and other important aspects of human development. Comparisons are made at the end of this paper to identify similarities and differences in concepts and developmental trajectories as well as relative strengths and weaknesses of the various approaches.


Community Schools


Healthy Schools


The evolution of school health promotion has tended to go across the table below from left to right as well as from top to bottom.

Interventions are aimed at the captive audience in schools. These are usually single interventions (most often instructional in nature) on single health issues that are controlled for quality as they are implemented over a few years, in the hope that they “stick” within the school system. The focus is on individual behaviour change and various theories are used as the basis for successful interventions. To enhance the effectiveness of the interventions, teacher training, parent involvement, youth engagement and coordination with the community are used to support the intervention. Diffusion of innovations theory is sometimes used to explain the process nut more often the focus is placed on whether health behaviour change can be affected by improved health knowledge after a year or two of intervening. Gradually, the intervention is adapted to reach all children and more focus is placed on children who are at higher risk from the problem.		Multiple interventions on single or a selected number of priority health issues are seen to be more effective. At first, these multiple interventions are simply added and not necessarily coordinated. These interventions become coordinated programs or services, rather than just activities or projects. Coordinating these programs is more effective so voluntary coordination mechanisms and processes are developed. Soon, the need to assign coordinators to support cooperation is recognized.	Attention is drawn to the “whole school” and models of health promoting schools, safe & caring schools, effective schools and community/wrap-around/full-service schools are developed as partnerships with the health, law enforcement and social/community services sectors. Educators begin to recognize that the needs of the “whole child” need to be recognized if educational achievement is to be improved. The health and other sectors realize that in order to be sustainable, the primary mandate of the school (educational attainment). The subsequent next step is often to seek evidence of the impact of health improvements on learning. Gradually, it is recognized that successful SH programs are based on realistic assessments of the constraints placed on teachers and other education personnel.	Comprehensiveness is recognized as being essential wherein actions are taken as multiple-levels (not only in schools) and responsibility for SH programs is shared among several sectors. Clusters of risk and protective factors are recognized. Synergies among strategies on single health issues are sought in areas such as chronic disease or social behaviours. Ecological approaches and systems thinking emerge as paradigms for program planning and evaluation.	Capacity building within ministries, agencies, school/agencies and professionals as well as within communities becomes recognized as being more important. These include capacities such as coordinated policy, assigned staff for coordination, mechanisms for cooperation, knowledge transfer, workforce development, monitoring and reporting, issue management and sustainability.	A better understanding of the impact of local community context and social determinants is sought through techniques such as GIS mapping, studies on place and health and other community-development theories. Programs are examined in relation to specific and similar contexts such as low-income communities, rural communities, aboriginal communities and others. Similarly, interest grows in explaining how open, loosely coupled and bureaucratic systems and organizations can be changed over time. These characteristics are examined through emerging theory such as complexity theory and new studies begin to examine how these affect institutionalization and sustainability.

Wraparound Full Service Schools