When the government published it’s 10 Year Health Plan in July 2025, much of the headline attention went to hospitals, waiting lists and the future of the family doctor. But tucked inside the 168 pages is an ambition that should matter to everyone working in school health: to raise the healthiest generation of children ever, while halving the gap in healthy life expectancy between the richest and poorest regions.
It is a bold promise, and a necessary one. Nearly one in five children now leave primary school living with obesity, and the inequalities behind that figure tend to set in early and last a lifetime. The plan’s logic is that the most effective place to change those outcomes is not in a hospital ward years later, but in the everyday settings where children already are.
That thinking runs through the plan’s three big shifts: moving care from hospital to community, from treating sickness to preventing it, and from analogue to digital. For children and young people, the three come together in one place more than any other, and that is school.
Prevention is meant to be delivered by default through neighborhood services, with children and young people supported through partnerships between neighborhood health centres and family hubs, schools, nurseries and colleges. The plan commits to expanding mental health support teams in schools and colleges to reach full national coverage by the end of the decade, and the Children’s Commissioner has gone further, calling for a school nurse in every school and regular development checks that follow children into adolescence.
The digital shift is just as significant. The plan introduces a single unique identifier for every child, built on the NHS number, to enable joined-up care across services, alongside a ‘My Children’ area in the NHS App as a modern alternative to the red book. The aim is simple. Fewer children falling through the gaps between health, education and social care, because the information follows the child rather than getting stuck in one service.
None of this works without the people and the tools to deliver it. School health teams are already stretched, and the plan’s promise of earlier, more proactive care only holds if those teams can spend their time with children rather than wrestling with paperwork. That is where the digital ambition has to translate into something practical on the ground.
At SchoolScreener, this is the work we have been supporting for years. Our platform helps NHS school health teams run vision, hearing, height and weight and wider health screening efficiently, capturing results digitally, flagging children who need follow up, and giving teams clear data to act on. It is built around the same principles the plan now sets out nationally: catching needs early, reducing administrative burden, and making sure no child is missed.
If your team is thinking about what the 10 Year Plan means in practice, we would be glad to show you how SchoolScreener can help you deliver it. Do get in touch for a friendly conversation.