By Molly Forbes, Executive Director, The Body Happy Organisation CIC
Schools are increasingly asked to address wellbeing, inclusion and safeguarding alongside academic outcomes. Yet one factor that cuts across all three is often left implicit rather than examined directly: how school systems, policies and everyday practices shape pupils’ experiences of their bodies. From participation in PE to responses to bullying, attendance, confidence and classroom engagement, body-related issues quietly influence how safe and included pupils feel in school and, in turn, whether they attend regularly, participate fully and achieve their potential.
Poor body image is a recognised early risk factor for eating disorders, with serious implications for children and young people’s health and wellbeing. In school settings, these risks intersect with everyday educational experiences, including participation in PE, appearance-based bullying, safeguarding vulnerabilities and engagement with learning. Despite this, body-related stigma and shame are often treated as peripheral rather than structural. While schools routinely monitor behaviour, attendance, bullying and emotional wellbeing, the role that body-related stigma plays in shaping those outcomes is rarely examined directly. When this dimension remains unnamed, a significant and preventable barrier to inclusion, participation and attainment can go unaddressed.
From vision to innovation
The Body Happy Organisation was founded to address this gap. Our vision is a world where every child and young person celebrates, respects and accepts ALL bodies – especially their own. Central to this is a deliberate shift in language and framing. Rather than focusing narrowly on body image as an individual mindset, we use the term body respect to reflect a broader cultural issue.
Body respect encompasses not only how pupils think and feel about their own bodies, but how bodies are talked about, treated and valued within a school community. It includes peer interactions, staff language, behaviour norms and everyday systems that shape belonging. From this perspective, body respect is not a one-off PSHE topic, but a whole-school culture question.
With support from the Fair Education Alliance Innovation Award, we developed and piloted the Body Happy Schools Programme across three diverse school settings. The award enabled us to move from isolated delivery to a structured, evidence-informed whole-school model.
What the Body Happy Schools Programme includes
The Body Happy Schools Programme is a whole-school approach designed to support sustained culture change. It brings together:
- staff training (CPD), building shared language, confidence and consistency across the workforce
- a peer advocacy strand, supporting pupils to lead and embed change within their school communities
- student workshops, delivered in age-appropriate formats across key stages
- parent workshops and resources, supporting consistent messaging between school and home
- access to the Body Happy Hub, a digital platform providing full schemes of work and individual lessons and activities for EYFS through to KS4, alongside guidance and implementation tools
These elements are underpinned by the Body Happy Skills framework and aligned with PSHE requirements, safeguarding responsibilities and inspection frameworks. The programme was developed collaboratively with schools and shaped by the realities of school life.
Impact on staff and students
The pilot outcomes were striking. Staff confidence increased significantly, with the proportion of teachers able to identify body image risk factors rising from 57.1% to 90.5%. This translated into greater confidence in challenging low-level appearance-based “banter” and more consistent responses to bullying and stigma.
Students noticed these changes. In one school, the proportion of pupils who agreed that “all bodies are respected here” increased by 21.7 percentage points. A similar increase was seen in pupils reporting that appearance-based bullying was taken seriously.
Curriculum integration also proved critical. At All Saints Academy Plymouth, 48.9% of pupils reported learning about body image prior to the programme; afterwards, that figure rose to 86.1%.
As one assistant headteacher reflected: “It’s about whole-school culture. Everyone now has a shared framework of language.”
Schools also reported additional benefits through peer-led delivery. One headteacher told us: “I’ve seen huge development in self-esteem, self-worth and leadership presence in the children.” A Year 9 student added that “having the older students there helping with the workshops made me feel safer”.
Beyond wellbeing: legacy and systems change
The legacy of the Innovation Award has extended beyond the original school pilots. Evidence from the programme has informed wider policy and advocacy work, including co-authoring a report for the APPG on Eating Disorders on the prevention of eating disorder harm, where the Body Happy Schools Programme is featured as a case study.
Building on this evidence base, we have secured two local authority partnerships and a charity partnership, extending access to schools at scale. Schools across Devon, South Yorkshire and North Northamptonshire can now access the full programme, or specific elements of the programme, fully funded through these partnerships. And we’re working to develop more partnerships of this nature so more schools can enjoy the benefits of the programme fully funded too.
Lessons for school culture and next steps
A clear lesson from this work is that body respect is most effective when addressed collectively. When staff share confidence and language, students feel safer. When young people are trusted as advocates, culture change accelerates. And when body respect is embedded into everyday systems, rather than added on, the impact is sustained.
Schools interested in strengthening inclusion, safeguarding and participation through a whole-school approach to body respect can explore the programme and routes to access via our website, and register interest in joining the programme.
Molly Forbes is an award-winning author, campaigner and the Founder and Executive Director of The Body Happy Organisation CIC. With two decades’ experience in journalism, media and communications, she has helped shape national conversations on body image, stigma and prevention, with appearances across BBC News, Channel 4, Woman’s Hour and more.
Molly contributed to the recent parliamentary report from the APPG on Eating Disorders and sits on the National Institute of Teaching’s Expert Working Group for the Centre for Digital Information Literacy in Schools. Her work focuses on prevention, whole-school change and compassionate public health practice.
She is the author of Body Happy Kids and Every Body, with Every Body winning The Week Junior Children’s Book of the Year Award (Wellbeing).
About The Body Happy Organisation CIC
The Body Happy Organisation CIC is a multi award-winning UK non-profit focused on supporting schools to build body-respecting cultures as part of inclusive education practice. Its work centres on prevention, wellbeing and belonging, with a strong emphasis on whole-school change rather than one-off interventions.
The organisation’s work is informed by a research partnership with the University of Lincoln and development support from the Fair Education Alliance. It works in partnership with schools, local authorities, public health teams and researchers to support long-term, evidence-informed approaches that reduce stigma and strengthen inclusion across education settings.
Website: www.bodyhappyorg.com
