World water day 2023 – water only schools

On March 22, the world will celebrate World Water Day, a day dedicated to raising awareness of the importance of freshwater and advocating for the sustainable management of water resources.

In line with this mission, the Mayor of London has implemented a water-only schools policy to encourage children to drink water instead of sugary drinks while at school.

The water-only schools policy aims to improve the health and wellbeing of children by reducing their intake of sugar and increasing their consumption of water. Sugary drinks are one of the leading causes of childhood obesity and tooth decay, and the policy aims to tackle this problem head-on. By promoting water as the default choice in schools, the policy hopes to instil healthy habits in children that will stay with them throughout their lives.

Drinking more water is important for children because it means they drink less high sugar and high fat drinks, stay hydrated and protect their teeth. It is also essential for healthy brain function and can help children concentrate better in class. Children who are healthy and well, do better in school. Drinking more water can also reduce the number of single use plastic bottles.

Expanding the number of water only schools is a key priority for the Mayor and London leaders and was endorsed by London’s Child Obesity Taskforce. Last summer the Mayor worked with Thames Water to gift 20 drinking water fountains to London schools. In receiving the fountain each school committed to become water only, working with students and parents.

Following the success of this first round, the Mayor is very pleased to announce that an additional 20 fountains have been offered to schools, with installation starting in April 2023.

To get London’s young people involved in sharing the water only message, London’s Child Obesity Taskforce launched a design competition inviting students to create a design promoting water only schools and its benefits.

Almost 300 young people entered our competition with the winners getting the chance to work with a top advertising agency, Havas, to design their work and see it in adverts in London.

Aayan Ahmed from Oaklands School, Bethnal Green, was one of two winners selected by a specialist judging panel made up of London’s Child Obesity Taskforce members and creative specialists from Havas.

Aayan was invited to the Havas headquarters where he worked with a well-known digital marketing designer to develop his image into digital format in Illustrator for print.

The Oaklands Art department and Aayan had a tour of the company and got to see how the major advertising company works with huge names in the industry like Porsche.

Miss Bunce, Head of Art at Oaklands school said:

“As an Art department, we pride ourselves for working on topical issues like climate change, healthy eating and diversity. We encourage our students to look at everyday issues around them both on a national and global level. A student voice about being on this planet is important to us. Our ethos is to be kind, work hard and take risks. We wanted to take part in this very exciting competition because we feel that promoting drinking water is important, as is encouraging young people to drink water for their health and well-being.

“We set up our lessons based around the competition and found our students were very engaged in having a voice. They created very dynamic, creative, individual and educational artworks, with outstanding formative outcomes. We are very proud of the art here at Oaklands School in Bethnal Green.”

On this World Water Day, let us all commit to making water the default choice in our schools and ensuring that our children have access to clean, safe, and sustainable sources of water.

Schools can access a water only schools toolkit, for both Primary and Secondary schools, to start them on their journey.

Visit:

www.london.gov.uk/programmes-strategies/health-and-wellbeing/healthy-schools-london-0/water-only-school-toolkit