What’s been happening in the world of education and elsewhere?
- A new report by the Youth Sport Trust has found that physically active girls are happier and more resilient than those who are not physically active. Girls were asked to rate how often they felt certain aspects related to personal wellbeing, including confidence, resilience and happiness and 77% of more active girls responded as being resilient compared to 46% of less active girls.
So what can be done? To help inspire schools to use Physical Education and school sport much more intentionally to promote wellbeing and support the personal development of everyone the Youth Sport Trust are encouraging us to get involved in their YST National School Sport Week .
Every school will have the opportunity to take part in ‘Five Ways to Wellbeing’ between 24 to 28 June to celebrate the power of PE and school sport to improve young people’s wellbeing.
- Laurence Guinness, chief executive of the Childhood Trust, says that children have “scavenged for food from bins, eaten tissue paper to fend off hunger [and] bartered for food at school.” Read the Children’s Future Food Inquiry here to find out more about children and food insecurity and how it impacts on their lives. Read more about the #Right2Food charter.
- Talking about the recent LGBT+ protests in Birmingham, Russell Hobby, head of Teach First and a former general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers says schools “have a duty to highlight diversity in families. Parents can offer an alternative belief but they do not have the right to restrict their children from hearing what schools have to say. This is not brainwashing”.
- Researchers from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) have found that some schools discourage the admission of preschool children with complex needs. They found that 26 per cent of children with a statements move on to other schools compared to 18 per cent of children with no recorded SEND. One of the authors of the study, Dr Tammy Campbell says
It’s very possible that continuity of transition for children with special educational needs and disabilities has become even less stable in the most recent years. Funding cuts combined with target-based school accountability measures mean that schools are disincentivised from admitting these pupils.