CAN a healthy lifestyle improve the performance of pupils?

That's the question at the heart of an experiment in which youngsters at a Basingstoke school are the guinea pigs.

Chineham Park Primary School, in Shakespeare Road, Popley, is taking part in a nine-month pilot scheme that encourages healthy living for children.

The experiment - devised by nutritionist Patrick Holford, chief executive of charity Food for the Brain - stems from the belief that you can change children's behaviour by changing what they eat.

Staff at the school have introduced a healthy menu and are encouraging parents to do the same at home.

Breaktime snacks have been replaced by fruit, oat biscuits and fresh-baked bread, while pizza and chips at lunchtime are limited to just once a week.

Mums and dads are invited to cookery classes where they are handed goodie bags full of healthy food to take home to try with their families.

Children also take part in daily 15-minute speed, agility and quickness (SAQ) exercises in the playground.

The 100 pupils, aged four to 11, are being monitored through regular wellbeing surveys, and a focus group of 10 children have blood, urine and hair tests to monitor their nutritional levels.

The experiment is being followed by ITV's Tonight with Trevor McDonald programme and headteacher Gwen Clifford appeared on the programme on Friday, January 5.

In the 2005 primary school performance Standard Attainment Tests (SATS) league tables, Chineham Park was ranked one of the worst schools out of the 13,562 covered in the country. But last year, the school nearly doubled its points and moved out of the bottom 200.

Mr Holford said the relatively poor performance of pupils was a key reason for Chineham Park being invited to take part in the study.

He explained: "We are interested in schools that had a poor record in terms of SAT scores and had plenty of room for improvement."

Mrs Clifford welcomed the opportunity to get the school involved in a project that could go hand-in-hand with other developments at the school.

She said: "It's about trying to create healthy lifestyles, both in the school and at home, and raising awareness of exactly what we are eating, what we are giving our children to eat and how that affects their learning."

Mrs Clifford said that before the scheme started in September, the school already served up Jamie Oliver-influenced healthy school dinners. It also provided a breakfast club serving up nutritional meals such as yoghurt and fruit.

She said: "I was really pleased that all of the parents wanted their children to be part of this - that reflects that they want the best for their children. I know that some of them are finding it difficult to make the changes."

The headteacher wants to make it easier for mums and dads to ditch the junk food by trying to persuade market traders to set up their stalls in the school playground. This will mean that parents without transport can buy fruit and vegetables on the school trip.

Mrs Clifford said: "A trip to Tesco where they can buy fresh produce means two bus journeys."

It's early days, but the headteacher believes the experiment is showing some early positive signs.

Mrs Clifford said: "The most significant effect at the moment is due to the SAQ and the improvement in the children's movement. You can see changes in them beginning to emerge.

"We ran behavioural and cognitive tests on the children at the start of the project and we ran them again before Christmas. In almost every measure, there has been a significant improvement in only three months."

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