Table 1.

Lessons learnt from AFLY5 & implications for future school-based diet and physical activity (PA) interventions

Lesson learnt	Implication for future research and practice	Cross cutting themes
1) Child engagement		Building on existing knowledge and resources	Whole school approach
Provide children with a sense of ownership over diet and PA	Create activities that allow children to be actively involved and make choices over behaviours to develop a sense of autonomy
2) School level
-Organisational
Identify a key contact in the school to lead the intervention	Support the teacher to act as a project champion – provide extra training and resource for this person
-Curricular/ethos
Embedding diet and PA across the curriculum	Include lessons across the curriculum
Support teachers to act as positive diet and PA role models	Provide teachers with guidance on how to change their own behaviour and then model key behaviours to reinforce curriculum messages and to improve staff health
Eating in school	Ensure school meal provision, rules around snacking and packed lunches consistently applied and are supportive of messages in intervention
Space for physical activity and provision of extra-curricular sports/PA	Identify additional spaces in the school for physical activity
	Ensure provision of extra-curricular sports/PA consistent/supportive of messages in intervention
3) Parental and community engagement
-Parents
Engage parents with homework	Include activities for parents and children to do together
Bring the parents into school for events	Have shows, student demonstrations to create a “buzz” around diet and PA behaviour change
-Wider community
Invite those with appropriate skills in local area to speak to parents and children	Fits in with the healthy schools framework
4) Government/policy level
-Policy/school ethos
Lack of teacher self-efficacy to teach PA	Increase broader teacher expertise in PA promotion – utilise existing continuing professional development programmes
Incorporating diet and PA messages across the primary school years	Identify how diet and PA messages are presented across the curriculum and how skills and knowledge are reinforced and developed across the primary school years
Environmental/setting
Create facilities for cooking in schools	Negotiated access to school canteens, integrate with school food service. Identify other local resources.
Create facilities for PA in schools	Identify local resources that could supplement pre-existing school resources.