Core competencies

The core competencies provide a benchmark for the core skills and knowledge children should have about nutrition and being active. They are a guide and are not part of the national curriculum.

This is a really useful resource to show what children should be able to accomplish at different ages.

Try this!

Why not use the core competencies to help you plan skill progression into your lessons and benchmark what stage children are at?

Curriculum

Supports science, design and technology and PSHE

Science
Animals, including humans

Key Stage 1

• Describe the importance of exercise for humans, eating the right amounts of different types of food, and hygiene

Key Stage 2

• Identify that animals, including humans, need the right types and amount of nutrition, and that they cannot make their own food; they get nutrition from what they eat

Design and Technology
Cooking and Nutrition

Key Stage 2

• Understand and apply the principles of a healthy and varied diet

PSHE Association guidance on delivering Health and Wellbeing in the Curriculum
Health and Wellbeing

Key Stage 1

• What constitutes a healthy lifestyle including the benefits of physical activity, rest, healthy eating and dental health
• To recognise what they like and dislike, how to make real, informed choices that improve their physical and emotional health, to recognise that choices can have good and not so good consequences

Key Stage 2

Building on Key Stage 1, pupils should have the opportunity to learn:

• How to make informed choices (including recognising that choices can have positive, neutral and negative consequences) and to begin to understand the concept of a ‘balanced lifestyle’  

In the classroom

You can use the core competencies as a guide to help you plan your lesson activities, and make sure children are learning and developing core skills in areas such as:

• diet and health
• consumer awareness
• cooking
• food safety
• active lifestyles