Wild things: how ditching the classroom boosts children's mental health

Getting outdoors can pay dividends in academic performance - but it also improves pupils' concentration and confidence.

Three years ago teacher Simon Poote spotted a disused strip of land on the grounds of Long Crendon school in Aylesbury. Instead of giving over the 15-metre square lawn to recreational use, or simply ignoring it, Poote saw potential for creating an outdoor learning space for the primary’s year 1 to 6 students. The only snag was how to pay for the plot’s transformation.

“We have lots of space but not much money,” says headteacher Sue Stamp. The school therefore appealed to parents, local businesses and the community to donate everything from landfill material to create small hills, to unwanted play equipment to build a trim trail and tunnels for the children to explore. Help came thick and fast, and the area now boasts a fully equipped thatched mud kitchen and a system of pipes and pulleys to transport water around the site.

Stamp insists outdoor learning has become more than just a project for the school, “it’s a way of life” she explains. The whole ethos of the school is to be outdoors as much as possible, rain or shine, so that students of all ages also take part in forest school activities in a wooded area alongside the playing field two days a week, learning skills such as fire lighting and making charcoal, as well as being allowed to climb trees, all under supervision.

Many of the outdoor activities they undertake are linked to curriculum subjects, and complement classroom lessons rather than detract from them. A factor which Stamp believes has played a part in the school’s continuing exam success. But outdoor learning is far more than an academic exercise – the head claims the impact on children’s mental health and wellbeing is undeniable.

“We have seen an amazing difference in some children,” she says. “Children who just didn’t engage in the classroom suddenly come into their own when they get outside.” Students who are less academically inclined gain in confidence and Stamp claims she has seen them step up as leaders in practical group activities for the first time.

Healing division in schools: the lessons from Ireland

As racism rears its head after the EU referendum, a chain set up to counter sectarian education is offering solutions for the UK.

In a horseshoe, sitting around teacher Laura Clarke, year 1 pupils from Redfield Educate Together academy in Bristol discuss the EU referendum. “Do you remember what happened?” asks Clarke. “There was a vote and people were unkind to people from other countries,” pipes up Ben Wycherley, aged six.

“How do you feel about that?” Clarke asks her class. “Shocked,” says Tarren Dwyer-Reid, also six. “Sad,” says classmate Angelo Marmolejo, whose parents are Spanish.

“How do you think being unkind might make other people feel?” asks Clarke. “I’d feel lonely,” says Zoe Papp.

“Not very welcoming”, written up on the whiteboard, is the phrase that seems best to sum up the children’s view.

This new school – the first established in England by the Irish Educate Together multi-academy trust – serves a diverse catchment in central Bristol: 60% of children come from black and minority ethnic backgrounds.

The city, like others, is feeling anxious after incidents of racial hatred and immigrants being told to “go home” following the referendum. One local primary school posted a notice on its Twitter feed offering to help families report racism and hate crime.

The headteacher here, Ros Farrell, is keenly aware that her school’s unique “ethical education curriculum” is needed as never before, as its children grow up in a multicultural city where a higher than expected 38% of voters opted to leave the EU.

The ethos of this chain of schools was developed in the Republic of Ireland – the first was founded in 1978 to offer an alternative to faith-based education, still the only option for 97% of pupils there. Educate Together’s “ethical education” approach, Farrell says, is intended to help children understand and value belief systems other than their own, and explore concepts of equality and justice.

How to teach … immigration

Educating students about the UK’s diverse mix of cultures promotes inclusion and tolerance. Take your pick of our resources.

London is made up of more than 270 nationalities with more than 300 languages now spoken in the capital’s schools, so what does it really mean to be British?

Teaching students about the UK’s diverse population is a good way to promote inclusion and tolerance in class, and there are plenty of ideas on how to tackle the topic of immigration on the Guardian Teacher Network.

A good place to start is by exploring the history of immigration and emigration to and from Britain with this lesson plan by Teaching Resources Support, suitable for key stage 3 students. Another lesson by TrueTube asks what makes Britain British? Students could work in groups to create a timeline from the 1st century to the present day, showing how Britain has been a multi-ethnic country for most of recorded history.

An accompanying lesson plan discusses the benefits and challenges of living in a multicultural society. Students could create a word bank of terms such as segregation, integration, diversity, prejudice, identity, isolation, extremism and discrimination.

The lesson includes instructions for a fun game called Turnabout, which tests debating skills. You’ll need a few prepared statements for and against immigration such as: “We should all be free to live where we choose”, “People should live and work in the country where they were born”, and “Multiculturalism is good for Britain”. Students must present their argument from one point of view until a bell sounds, signalling them to change their stance.

Working in groups, you could ask students to explore why people migrate using these three lessons from the Geographical Association. They are for secondary students and cover migration, migration within the EU and the case of refugees and asylum seekers. Get students to think about any emotions you might have arriving in a new country. What are the benefits of immigration? Are there any challenges that might have to be dealt with in the communities where immigrants live?

School libraries face a bleak future as leaders try to balance the books

Libraries are suffering at the hands of budget, curriculum and digital demands.

But we must not underestimate this vital resource.

I remember my school library: it had two floors with spiral staircases, individual study cubicles and a classroom on the upper floor. It was attached to the sixth form block, giving the students easy access to a study facility. One particular memory is of a Puffin Books sale – I could even tell you the books I bought (and still have).

This was in the days before personal computing so the only source of information – apart from other people, TV or radio – was books. There was something tactile about walking up to a shelf, looking along the spines and selecting a book which you hoped would answer the question posed in your homework or choosing a work of fiction by reading the blurb on the back.

In recent years the picture has changed; the proliferation of personal electronic devices means information is instantly available almost anywhere and the printed word is in decline. Libraries as we knew them are changing: public libraries now provide access to the internet in addition to their DVD lending sections; many school libraries have also followed the electronic route and have been re-named “learning resource centres”.

This is not just a name change. This new title has changed the focus of school libraries too. Books are no longer de rigueur; some senior leadership teams seem to feel their students are no longer interested in real books and are replacing them with electronic equivalents. Some teachers are reporting that their school libraries are closing and the remaining books, after many have been thrown away, are being transferred to classrooms or corridors, where there is no space for quiet study or reading.

A survey by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) suggests teachers are concerned about the future of school libraries. Almost all of the 485 school staff who responded to the survey said their school still had a library. But 22% said their library had suffered at least a 40% cut in funding since 2010 and 21% said their budget is insufficient to encourage pupils to read for pleasure. This is not helping pupils’ literacy skills: removing the very objects which children need to access regularly will lead to even less opportunity for them to engage with non-fiction and fiction, which fires the imagination far more than the pre-constructed world in a computer game.

How to promote good mental health among teachers and students in your school

Discuss mental illness regularly, incorporate more exercise and encourage honest dialogue, suggests the government’s mental health champion for schools.

We all know the basic requirements to maintain good physical health. We know we must eat well, exercise regularly, drink plenty of water, alcohol in moderation etc. These golden rules have been impressed upon most of us since we were old enough to comprehend them.

When it comes to mental health, however, we’ve been taking a different tack; most of us wait for mental illness symptoms to arise before giving the health of our minds any consideration. It’s a strategy that’s been disastrous for an entire generation of British people (and in particular those under the age of 25).

A person’s mental health cannot be seen and there is still a significant stigma attached to discussing mental health problems something which, in my capacity as the government’s mental health champion for schools, I am working hard to change.

Statistics tell us that one in four people in the UK will experience a mental illness each year. Yet we all have a brain and, therefore, a mental health. What if we gave consideration to how we might make lifestyle choices, and create an environment and society which is conducive to good mental health?

It was from this starting point that our Self-Esteem Team lessons for teenagers were born. We wanted to give young people the mental equivalent of their five-a-day; simple tips which improve self-esteem, promote positive body image, reduce stress and nurture the wellbeing of their minds.

Here are some tips for promoting good mental health in schools:

How to teach ... cold and flu

From making cuddly bacteria to lessons on Louis Pasteur, here’s our guide for teaching your students the basics of avoiding the dreaded lurgy.

Winter brings lots of wonderful things – a new year, snow, the chance to break out your scarf collection. But they are all doomed to arrive during the most disgusting time of the year: cold and flu season. For those in schools, each day brings a chorus of other people’s coughs and sneezes, and a gauntlet of germs to dodge. So how can you teach your students the basics of staying healthy?

Primary

For key stage 1 pupils, this three-lesson module – linked to the science and personal, social and health education (PSHE) curriculum – from Share Good Times Not Flu offers a simple overview of what it means to be healthy and how exercise, diet and hygiene can help your young charges stay that way. A key stage 2 version, also made up of three lessons , goes into greater detail about how germs enter the body through coughs, sneezes and unwashed hands, and how good hygiene practices can keep them out.

This resource pack from e-Bug offers a variety of fun ways to look at germs and microbes, including yeast races (exploring how microbes cause dough to rise), an experiment to see how far germs can spread through handshakes (using glo spray), and a toothbrushing tracker to highlight the importance of oral hygiene.

This guide to preventing the spread of bugs through handwashing, also from e-Bug, uses quizzes, colouring and a bowl of water and pepper (yep) to teach pupils the power of soap and water. And you can decorate your classroom with this accompanying poster to reinforce the message.

This US guide provides more puzzles, word searches and songs (“If you’re happy and you know it, scrub your hands!”) to ensure your little ones remember to clean their mitts, whileHygiene4Health offers a variety of resources on the topic, including this poster explaining the principles of good hand hygiene.

How to ... turn your classroom into a haunted house

Deck out your classroom for a spooktacular Halloween with pumpkin lanterns, scary sudoku and ghostly faces.

It’s Halloween again, the only time in the teaching calendar when it’s perfectly acceptable to come into school dressed as Dracula and plaster your classroom with spiders, ghosts and pumpkins. Creating your very own haunted classroom is an exciting, if ambitious, way to celebrate. For those willing to go the extra Halloween mile, here’s our crafty guide:

Draw your students in

A haunted pathway leading up to your classroom – refuse bags are really useful for this – will capture imaginations. You can hang spiders (see below for tips on making these), streamers and tape above it. Make a sign to direct students to your spooky setting or, for a novel twist, create a treasure hunt for students. Check out this example for inspiration.

Come up with a theme

Pirates, creatures of the night, or goblins and ghosts – there’s lots to choose from. If your theme is a haunted hospital, for example, create a section of the classroom with gruesome body parts, such as eyeballs (grapes) and brains (noodles). Or if you’re showcasing creepy creatures, put false spiders in jars filled with hand sanitiser – they’ll look eerily suspended. For more inspiration, check out these drawing exercises that explore the symmetry of black widow spiders and vampire bats.

Create an atmosphere

The sounds of your haunted setting (of which there are lots to choose from online) will have students on the edge of their seats. Involve them in creating a creepy atmosphere by getting them to record their own piece of spooky music ahead of the lesson. Or get everyone involved in a singalong with these spooky song lyrics from Musical Contexts, which can be sung with familiar tunes such as The Addams Family .

Create effective lighting by making a leaf from green card and cutting orange card into strips to make pumpkins. Put flameless tea lights at their centre for a safe but spooky mood setter.

California Thursdays Success Story

Gary Petill is convinced that if you’re trying to get kids to eat healthy food, the secret is in the presentation. Petill would know. He’s responsible for serving over 26 million meals a year through the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD), and has an impressive track record when it comes to pushing produce.

That’s why Petill and his staff serve fruit cups chock-full of bright slices of mango, watermelon, cucumber, and jicama in see-through containers. School salad bars brim with locally sourced lettuce, tomatoes, broccoli, kiwis, and citrus, and sport signs encouraging students to “Try Something New.”

The effort doesn’t end at the salad bar.

Mondays are meatless. School gardens are thriving. A vibrant farm-to-school program taps into San Diego County’s 350+ organic farms (the most in the nation). Those farms also support the popular “Harvest of the Month” program, through which a locally grown item such as creamy avocados or juicy plums is introduced to students and offered repeatedly throughout each month. An innovative "Breakfast in the Classroom" program reaches 90 percent of eligible children, up from only 25 percent when it began. And the "Prime Time Kids" dinner program currently serves a nutritious evening meal to students at more than 120 sites.

Knowing how to launch and maintain a successful nutrition program may help San Diego succeed with its next one.

Starting in late October, two dozen San Diego schools are rolling out California Thursdays™, a collaboration with the nonprofit Center for Ecoliteracy. This new program taps into San Diego’s existing commitment to source local produce, but takes it further by offering students a complete meal featuring ingredients from the Golden State.

The California Thursdays program is designed to connect the food on the plate to nearby farms and local communities that students know first-hand. Tender local asparagus and just-picked strawberries already come with great flavor; layering in the California Thursdays message teaches students to consider the source of their food and helps emerging healthy habits take root.

Intergalactic lessons: five creative ways to teach about space

Create your own big bang in the classroom with our lesson ideas, including making edible meterorites and studying real lunar rocks.

When Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the dusty surface of the moon, Armstrong summed up the epochal event with the famous words “that’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”.

The first moon landing will be remembered for centuries to come and this summer (Monday 20 July 2015) marks 46 years since it happened.

The anniversary is a great launching pad for teaching about outer space. We’ve gathered a few creative intergalactic lesson plans below – including edible meteorites and studying real lunar rocks. Our list isn’t exhaustive, however, so feel free to offer your own ideas in the comments thread below, or tweet us your favourites @GuardianTeach.

Borrow the moon

Get engagement levels soaring by bringing in real moon rock. The Science & Technology Facilities Council loans out moon rock, brought back to Earth by Nasa’s Apollo astronauts in the late 1960s and early 1970s, free of charge.

Advice on the website says that teachers should reserve samples four months in advance, and each loan comes with a wide range of support materials including books and DVDs. For example, as part of the Earth science unit at key stages 2 and 3 you can use the rocks to hold a talk exploring what lunar idioms and expressions mean. Teach about the differences and similarities between the Earth and the moon, as well as whether humans could survive there. There are plenty of ideas here on how to use the samples with secondary students.

Edible meteorites

Explore chondrules and fusion crust by making edible meteorites from peanut brittle and chocolate brownies. This resource, designed by Nasa, is aimed at 10- and 14-year-olds (fifth to eighth grades) in the US to help teaching the exploring meteorite mysteries unit. It can easily be adapted for other curriculums, however, including the Earth science unit in the UK.

Children living in Victorian conditions, say teachers

Teaching union’s survey finds children are turning up to school sick because parents cannot afford to take time off and sometimes without socks or a coat.

Children are turning up to school sick because their parents cannot afford to take time off to care for them, teachers say.

School staff are also still seeing youngsters arriving for lessons hungry, tired and wearing inappropriate clothes due to a continuing squeeze on family finances, according to the NASUWT teaching union.

It warned that the lives of many children are young people are being “blighted and degraded by poverty and homelessness”.

In some cases, teachers reported being aware of pupils living in “Victorian conditions”, of youngsters coming to school with no socks or coat and of more families depending on food banks.

A survey commissioned by the NASUWT found that almost seven in 10 (69%) of teachers said they had seen pupils coming to school hungry, while eight in 10 (80%) had witnessed youngsters turning up in clothes that were inappropriate for the weather and similar proportions reported children arriving in unwashed or damaged and frayed clothing.

In addition, 78% said they have seen pupils without appropriate footwear and 55% had seen youngsters who were unable to afford uniform.

One of the almost 2,500 teachers surveyed said they had seen: “Pupils who come into school unwell. Often their parents cannot afford to take a day off work, and therefore send their children to school when they ought to be at home.”

And another reported: “Pupils who need medical attention, but parents are not taking them/unable to take them to the GP, optician and/or dentist.”

How to give bright but disadvantaged kids a leg up

Able young people from disadvantaged backgrounds lose out at every stage in our education system. By the age of five, the poorest children are already 19 months behind their richest peers in how ready they are for school. A new report published by the Sutton Trust has revealed that this gap is cumulative: those who are shown to be bright in national tests aged 11 are barely half as likely as their more advantaged classmates to get the A Levels they need to go to a good university.

For this new report, called Subject to Background, my colleagues Kathy Sylva, Katalin Toth and I, drew on data from more than 3,000 young people – the majority in state schools – who have been tracked through school since the age of three for the longitudinal Effective Pre-School, Primary and Secondary Education project.

Out of this group only 33% of bright but disadvantaged students took one or more A Level exam in what the Russell Group of universities defines as “facilitating subjects” such as maths, English, the sciences, humanities or modern languages. This was compared with 58% of their more advantaged counterparts.

“Bright” students were defined as those children who had obtained Level 5 – the standard expected for 14-year-olds – or above on any of the three “core” subjects, English, maths or science, in national assessments at the end of primary school in Year 6, aged 11. The disadvantaged measure was based on whether a student was eligible for free school meals and their families’ social and economic status – which was linked to parents’ occupations and salary.

Better chances of success

But we did identify a number of factors that significantly increased the chances bright but disadvantaged pupils have of gaining good AS and A Level results. Students’ attainment at A Level is generally higher if they went to pre-school – especially if it was a high-quality pre-school. They also achieved better grades aged 18 if they had a good home learning environment in the early years followed up by academic enrichment activities at home, such as going on trips to museums and galleries, and reading for pleasure.

Classroom design can boost primary pupils' progress by 16%

 

We all know how important it is that our primary school teachers are highly qualified, but what is less known is what impact the room where children are taught has on their achievement or performance. Results of a three-year research project have shown that the design of a classroom at primary school level can boost learning progress by up to 16% in a single year.

Our team of researchers visited 27 schools in Blackpool, Hampshire and Ealing, carrying out detailed surveys of more than 150 classrooms in varying geographical and socio-economic contexts. Our resulting report analysed the performance of 3,766 pupils between the ages of five and 11 in relation to the design of their classroom, providing clear evidence for the first time that it had a dramatic affect on their attainment levels.

While we were aware that specific elements such as “air quality” have been analysed before, it was the first time researchers had ever gone into real schools and discovered the impact on children’s learning of every aspect of a classroom.

Measuring pupils' progress

For each pupil in the study, we looked at the teacher-assessed grades in reading, writing and mathematics at the start and the end of the year, so that their progress in each subject could be calculated. These subjects are typically taught in the same classroom, which represents a permanent learning space for the children at primary school level, unlike in a secondary school where students often move from room to room for their different subjects.

It was from this data that we could estimate that moving the “average” pupil from the least effective classroom to the most effective classroom accounted for an increase in pupil performance of 1.3 sub-levels of the national curriculum in a single year. The national curriculum is divided into eight levels, each with three sub-levels, used to measure children’s progress. Progress of 1.3 sub-levels based on the classroom environment is a big impact when the Department of Education expects primary school children to progress by two sub-levels in a year.

Top tips: how can PE and school sport help students stay healthy?

From pedometers to healthy Come Dine With Me clubs, physical education experts share their ideas for improving pupil wellbeing from our recent live chat.

Get pupils to wake and shake in lessons 
 

Brain function decreases after 17 minutes of sitting still. I know of lots of innovative primary schools that make sure children aren’t sitting for more than 15 minutes at a time. I have seen some wonderful literacy lessons delivered through physical activity, such as children acting out the story. With approaches like this, alongside a high quality PE and sport programme, schools can help young people achieve their 60 active minutes a day.

Alison Oliver, chief executive of the Youth Sport Trust.

Take a cross-curricula approach

PE shouldn’t be just within the fabric of the sports hall. For example, in maths and food technology you can compare data on athletic times and calorie count over a six-week period to predict outcomes. Or, to motivate disaffected groups in languages, it’s not uncommon to run a sports days in a different language. History and sport also play a great part in Britain and abroad. Henry VIII was a massive advocate of sport and there are many opportunities for projects between the history and PE department.

Steve Sallis, head of education and player welfare at Millwall Football Club.

Track how students are doing with a scorecard

Every Thursday our entire year 7 cohort arrive at school in their PE kit and take part in a physical activity instead of having their normal form time. They have a “personal best” scorecard, which lists performance measures linked to fitness levels, and work with a health mentor who designs activities around improving their performance over time. We deliver it on a day when the kids already have PE (to help with logistics) and have an all-inclusive “fun club” after school, which has fantastic levels of attendance.

Kevin Byrne, sport and health development leader at Bebington high sports college.

Rethink the layout of the playground 
 

Zoning the playground to ensure ball games don’t dominate and there’s space for a range of activities can inspire and empower a wider variety of pupils to “play” at playtime. Equally, training lunchtime supervisors to organise and lead activity has proven effective. Some of the most innovative and exciting work I have seen is where children are trained to lead and organise peer-led activities. Youth sport leadership not only increases participation, but is a powerful way of developing skills that are important to learning and life, such as communication, organisation and self-reflection.

Play isn’t just for primary school kids – it’s got an image problem

Why does a four-year-old play when a 14-year-old creates? It’s often argued that play is central to the lives of young children. Yet the play of older children and adults is often seen as leisure, escapism or even deviance. As psychologist Erik Erikson puts it: “The playing adult steps sideward into another reality; the playing child advances forward to new stages of mastery.” But there should not be such a binary division between what is educational and what is frivolous.

In my work in theatre education I’ve found playing to be a vital part of teaching young people of all ages, whether playing warm-up games, improvising scenes or exploring new ideas. Yet teachers are often held back by the belief that it’s only young children who are allowed to play.

Ruth Churchill Dower, director of Earlyarts, a network of people working in creative early years professionals, has highlighted the change in language from “play” to “creativity” as we talk of older children’s education. She points out that “play” is often seen as open-ended and egalitarian, while “creativity” is more associated with particular skills and “seems to sit higher in the unspoken hierarchy”.

Who’s being playful?

I wanted to find out whether we lose something when we stop talking about play in the education of older children. It was this question which prompted my current and ongoing, doctoral research, carrying out case studies of school classes taking part in Shakespeare Schools’ Festival. I followed six groups through rehearsal to the final performance looking at whether they play as they work together and if it’s relevant.

Teaching Tolerance in Kindergarten

By age 9, children have prejudices that are “highly resistant to change.” So if we want to fight racism and violence (particularly against black men), we need to teach diversity much earlier.

Children develop their sense of empathy between ages 4 and 8. It’s this ability to see and feel something from another’s perspective that helps us choose to treat others equally and to engage rather than to act from fear.

The best way to promote empathy is to provide children with quality, reciprocal relationships with people from diverse communities. But that can be difficult, as 84 percent of elementary school teachers are white. And in most major cities, the majority of public school children are not.

So, teachers need to get creative. Young children can only normalize what they experience regularly. If they only receive knowledge, insight and comfort from white people, this can have lasting effects on what they assume about people of color. It is this disconnect, as civil rights lawyer Constance Rice said, that can make police officers “kill and do things that don’t make sense to you and me.”

One effective way to help young children is to seek out diverse experts who can speak in schools about weather, food, construction, politics and electricity (all common preK- grade 3 topics).

Another way to influence young children’s racial attitudes early on are picture books. Given the particular fear toward black men, using literature to combat negative assumptions means going through classroom books and thinking carefully about how often and in what ways black boys and men are included in stories. Are there enough books with caring, compassionate and smart, black, male characters? Are books in classrooms about black history balanced with those about the everyday lives of black men so that racial diversity becomes normalized for young children?

Having only a handful will not be enough to normalize positive images of black men. But although these kinds of books are still difficult to find, it’s not impossible.

Authors, teachers and parents launch revolt over 'exam factory' schools

More than 400 children’s writers, parents and teachers have signed a letter to The Independent expressing concern over the anxiety caused to children by the ever-higher stakes of so-called “exam factories”.

The signatories – who include the author and former Children’s Laureate Michael Rosen, as well as child development expert Sue Palmer and parenting writer Sue Cowley – say they are “increasingly concerned at the pressure that is being placed on our children”, especially by the testing regime.

The concerns have tapped into a storm of debate about the nature of schooling, after the CBI’s director general, John Cridland, recently called for a move away from the “exam factory” model of education towards pupils getting a more “rounded and grounded education” for their own sakes and for that of the economy.

At the heart of the letter’s complaint are the effects on children and teachers alike of the slew of exams crammed into school time, causing anxiety for pupils and leaving headteachers fearing dismissal if they fail to meet minimum government targets.

READ MORE: A teacher speaks out: 'I'm effectively being forced out of a career that I wanted to love'

The letter states: “We are concerned to hear of children crying on their way to school, upset that they will not be able to keep up: of parents worried that their four-year-olds are ‘falling behind’ or of six-year-olds scared that ‘they might not get a good job’ … And we wonder what has happened to that short period in our lives known as ‘childhood’.” 

 

Already, children take a compulsory reading test at the end of their first year in compulsory education – the phonics check for all six-year-olds. But from next September they will also have a “baseline assessment” upon arrival at school, aged four or five, in counting and letter and picture recognition amongst other skills. These tests are aimed at helping show how much primary schools have improved individual pupils’ performance by the age of 11.

Prizes for primary children who eat most fruit and veg make them healthier eaters

Poor nutrition is a primary cause behind the rising cost of health care in many developed countries. Although pupils have good knowledge of what is healthy and what is not, that does not always translate into necessarily choosing to eat fruit and vegetables. Parents and teachers know how difficult it can be to encourage children to try healthy food.

The use of incentives that reward healthy eating or other forms of good behaviour are one option being discussed as a way round this. In our recent work we explored the use of incentives in the form of stickers and small rewards – such as small toys, yoyos and stationery – in order to increase fruit and vegetable consumption among primary school children.

It worked well, but we found that adding an element of competition meant children were three times more likely to eat fruit and vegetables.

Rewards for fruit and veg

Recent research in education, smoking cessation and exercise has shown that incentives can induce individuals to engage in positive behaviour. In relation to nutrition, it remains an open question whether rewarding individuals for eating healthier will have any effect on behaviour or will play any lasting role in solving the problems caused by poor nutrition.

In order to explore this, we carried out a randomised controlled trial in 31 schools in England involving more than 600 pupils in years 2 and 5. Children’s dietary choices at lunch were monitored for a period of six weeks and an intervention was carried out in two-thirds of the schools for a period of four weeks. Sometimes we observed that children were choosing, or were given fruit and vegetables, but decided not to eat it.

Streaming six-year-olds by ability only benefits the brightest

The streaming of children at primary school by their ability is actually widening the achievement gap between low and high-attaining pupils. Our research has shown that streaming in primary school leads to higher marks for children in the top class, but lower marks for those in the middle and lower classes compared to those in mixed ability classes.

Streaming – when children are placed in a class based on general ability and taught in that class for the whole time – is on the increase among five to seven-year-olds in UK primary schools. While around 2-3% of year 2 pupils were streamed in the 1990s, by 2007 this had increased to 17% in England, 16% in Scotland, 20% in Wales and 11% in Northern Ireland. 

 Streaming for six year olds

Our research, presented at the British Educational Research Association conference, used data from the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) to investigate how grouping children by their ability into upper, middle and lower streams in year 2 (six to seven-years-old) relates to their academic progress. We also took into account other key child, family and school characteristics.

The MCS follows the lives of around 19,000 children born in the UK in 2000 to 2001. Five surveys of cohort members have been carried out so far – at nine months, three, five, seven and 11 years.

Our research focused on children in families in England where information on streaming had been provided by their primary school teacher – and we had data from the National Pupil Database on their test results at Key Stage 1 (five to seven-years-old). The analysis was based on 2,544 children in 307 primary schools, of whom 83% (2,098) were not streamed, 8% (222) were in the “top” stream, 5% (130) were in the “middle” stream and 4% (94) were in the “bottom” stream.

What do primary school children need to eat?

We should be concerned about our children’s diets. In 2011, nearly 10% of four to five-year-olds in the UK were classified as obese. By the time they leave primary school, nearly 20% of children are obese. Around 40% of these overweight children will continue to have increased weight during adolescence and 75-80% of obese adolescents will become obese adults. If these children are to avoid health problems such as tooth decay, iron deficiency, rickets, type-2 diabetes and heart disease later in life, something has to be done about their diet.

Now that the government has launched a programme of free school meals for all five to seven-year-olds at state school in England, the policy is under the microscope to see if it will actually make a difference to children’s health.

Compared to adults, the energy and nutrient requirements of children are actually relatively similar. Here is a list of six key nutritional elements to be aware of in primary school children.

Energy

The energy requirement of young children is not far off what we need as an adult. All that physical and mental development needs a lot of energy – as the table shows. 

 

But according to the latest National Diet and Nutrition Survey (NDNS), published in May 2014, children are perhaps getting a bit too much of their daily recommended amounts of certain foodstuffs, as the graph below shows. This could be contributing to obesity. It’s worth noting that the NDNS is a survey, so food intake is often under-reported.

Pedal power: why cycling to school is good for learning and the planet

Schools are starting cycle- or walk-to-school schemes to nurture green thinking and encourage children to be healthy. Matthew Jenkin meets the teachers making a difference.

 

Every time a child is driven to primary school and back their car releases about 84 balloons worth of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, according to the charity Sustrans, which promotes sustainable transport in the UK. That’s a lot of hot air. The amount of damaging greenhouse gasses produced on the daily school run could be reduced dramatically, however, if parents left their cars at home and students simply walked, cycled or scooted in.

Schools across the UK are starting bike- or walk-to-school schemes to not only do their bit for the environment but also to teach the curriculum in a fun, active way.

Winton Primary School in Bournemouth started a cycle to school scheme to combat traffic on nearby streets following a surge in pupil population after the school decided to go from two to four classes per year group. After a small child was hit by a car last year, headteacher Neil Tarchetti decided it was time to take action.

As well as holding competitions to incentivise students, with prizes for children who brought their bikes to school every day of the week, the school worked with Bournemouth borough council to set up designated park and walk areas.

It’s helping to ease traffic in the area, claims Tarchetti, but most importantly it also keeps children fit and helps them learn more about why we need to protect the health of our planet.

“Cycling and walking to school has become part of our efforts to build children’s awareness of environmental issues,” the headteacher explains. “Many students didn’t previously know what to do to lower their carbon footprint so we are bringing that into the curriculum more and developing their understanding.”