Active Schools Flag (ASF) is a Department of Education and Skills initiative supported by Healthy Ireland which recognises schools that strive to achieve a physically educated and physically active school community.

The aim of Active Schools is to encourage school communities to be more active, more often. It links in with all of the work we are doing throughout the year on Healthy Living - being active, getting exercise, taking care of our minds and bodies. 

Ms. Leonard and Ms. Toolan are the Active School Co-ordinators and have a wonderful committee of children from our school, whose job is to assist in organising the activities to keep us all active as we work towards our first Active Schools Flag. In order to achieve this, we will be running various active initiatives throughout the year. This aims to increase awareness of the importance of physical activity amongst children. 

We have created our school’s Active Schools Slogan, introduced Playground Leaders from 5^th/6^th Class to organise, lead and supervise active breaks in our school. We have participated in:

• Skip around Europe and the World challenges
• Movement Break Challenges
• Croke Park Movement Break initiative
• Active School Week
• Active Homework
• Orienteering, Soccer, GAA and Basketball Coaching
• Swimming lessons and a Water Safety programme.

Partnerships

We partner with our local GAA Club-Curry GAA, Sligo GAA Coaching and Games and Sligo Sports Partnership.  We are lucky to have a CDO (Club Development Officer) providing weekly GAA coaching in our school as part of the Connacht GAA initiative.  We are also fortunate to have the expertise of our local club representative, Paul Durcan, who has kindly given his time to train and develop GAA skills for children from 3^rd to 6^th class.  We work closely with Sligo Sports Partnership (SSP) to facilitate Swimming lessons for children from 1^st - 6^th Class each year.  We also collaborated with SSP to learn about Orienteering. The children gained great knowledge and developed fundamental skills through this 6 week programme.