HEALTH tips were on the lips of educators from around the world who met in Singapore yesterday to discuss ways to get their schools fighting fit.

The first day of the second Educating For Health conference brought together educators from 338 schools here, as well as 41 representatives from schools in other countries, including Australia, Norway, Brunei and Thailand.

The aim is to share programmes and resources that have been effective in promoting the holistic health - the physical, social, mental and emotional wellness - of students.

The conference - with the theme Connecting The Healthy Youth Way - was organised by the Healthy Youth Committee (HYCom), a collaboration between the Ministry of Education and 11 other agencies here.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, Senior Minister of State for National Development and Education Grace Fu said she was glad that many schools in Singapore emphasised the importance of holistic health with their students.

She commended two Singapore schools in particular for their success in implementing effective health programmes.

Bukit View Primary School in Bukit Batok has managed to get its percentage of overweight pupils down from 13 per cent in 2005 to below 9 per cent since 2006. It did this by ensuring that 'every child exercises daily', said Mr Quek Swee Nee, 29, the school's head of department for physical education, co-curricular activities and aesthetics.

'On the days that the pupils don't have physical education (PE) lessons, they either participate in a morning run or a mass physical activity like sports or dance during school hours,' he said.

Initial efforts in Singapore schools to keep students' weight down were exercise-based, such as the Trim And Fit (TAF) club, which required overweight students to participate in additional supervised physical activity in school.

In recent years, however, the effort has evolved to ensure that students' emotional, mental and social needs are factored in also.

A prime example of this integrated approach is Zhenghua Secondary School in Bukit Panjang, whose overweight population has nearly halved from 4.88 per cent in 2006 to 2.87 per cent last year.

Mr Hanif Abdul Rahman, 36, the school's head of department for PE, co-curricular activities and aesthetics, credits its success to incorporating character development in PE and health lessons.

'The school's approach was to focus on students' emotional and mental wellness, to help them understand themselves better and take ownership of their health,' he said.

More than 1,000 educators attended yesterday's conference. It continues today with speakers from Norway, Hong Kong and Singapore.

This article was first published in The Straits Times.