Gold HEYL Award
I am delighted to announce that Mara Nursery have received our Gold HEYL Award! (Healthy Early Years London – Gold Level)
It is a special recognition given to nurseries that go above and beyond to support children’s health, wellbeing and development.
It means Mara nursery:
- Encourages healthy eating and helps children learn good food habits.
- Promotes active play every day to keep children fit and confident.
- Supports children’s emotional wellbeing, helping them feel safe, happy and ready to learn.
- Works closely with families to create healthy routines at home and in nursery.
- Shows a long-term commitment to helping children grow up healthy, confident and ready for school.
In short, the Gold HEYL Award shows that our nursery is doing excellent work to give every child the healthiest possible start in life. Below are the wonderful comments from the Quality Assurance Group!
Thank you for submitting your Gold Case Study to the Quality Assurance Group (QuAG). Congratulations on reaching this milestone, this is a great achievement. The QuAG have now reviewed and approved your application and feedback is as follows:
“A good gold award application completed to a high standard. Lots of innovative ideas such as herb tasting and fruit easter baskets to improve the eating habits of children. Encouraging to see lots of exposure to children with a variety of fruits and vegetables. Loved hearing about the purchase of the greenhouses showing your commitment to food growing. Evident to see there was good communication with parents with education provided around the topic and information being sent home, liked the weekly ‘top tips’ on healthy eating, all of which shows the settings commitment to ensuring messages are reached at home.
Your setting exceeded outcomes for nursery children and there was marked improvements for unintended outcomes from the parent survey which was very commendable. Ideas for sustaining the good work such as growing competition between the nursery rooms and starting a herb garden were great to hear about."
And
“Well done on the comprehensive implementation of your Action Plan. It is clear from your case study that you planned and implemented an excellent range of interventions for the children, within a whole setting approach. It was great to read about the food growing and changes made to the overall food environment. You must be delighted to have exceeded your child-based targets and to see the wider impact. It’s encouraging to see the improvements in the parent survey results; it is always more challenging to change what’s happening at home.