Australia and New Zealand will co-host the ninth FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023. 32 teams will compete, up from 24 at France in 2019.

When is the Women’s World Cup 2023?

The Women’s World Cup 2023 takes place between 20th July and 20 August 2023.

Women’s World Cup 2023 reading challenge

Join the National Literacy Trust and Lioness Leah Williamson at a free online Great FIFA World Cup 2023 Reading Challenge event on Thursday 20th July 2023.

Pupils will engage in fun and interactive reading and writing activities and will have the chance to submit questions.

Make World Cup predictions using real-time stats

With major sporting events come great opportunities to bring the rich world of statistics into the primary classroom. Football provides vast amounts of data with which many children will already be familiar – top goal scorers, league tables, numbers of passes, red cards.

Maths lessons are the perfect opportunity to harness the enthusiasm for the game in order to challenge mathematical thinking. Download Aidan Severs’ KS2 football statistic maths lesson plan.

Disney Shooting Stars training

Help girls unlock their inner superheroes and get lost in the magic of Disney storytelling, all while getting physically active.

Designed to be delivered at breakfast club, lunchtime or after school, The Disney inspired Shooting Stars training course from the FA is free for primary school staff and comprises an online training course made of five separate modules:

• Introduction
• The fundamentals
• Put it into practice
• The Disney experience
• Bring it to the playground

Free KS1 football poetry resource pack

Harness pupils’ enthusiasm for football by reading the football poem included in this free Plazoom KS1 World Cup resource pack. They’ll look at how verbs are used, before writing their own poems.

The download contains teaching notes and slides, a poem, football images, a poetry planning sheet and themed writing paper.

KS2 World Cup oracy activities and worksheets

This Key Stage 2 World Cup resource pack from Plazoom asks pupils to create an oral commentary to accompany images from football matches, clips of football matches or school football activities.

They’ll explore the language commentators use and identify how they show enthusiasm when speaking, before writing a short sports article that takes into account different viewpoints.

Describe settings with Frank Lampard

Written by Frank Lampard, the Frankie’s Magic Football series is the perfect combination of magic and football to inspire creative writing. With each adventure taking place in a different location (from the prehistoric land of dinosaurs to the jungles of Brazil), the books prompt children to consider the idea of setting in story writing.

This KS1 football literacy lesson plan encourages children to think about the techniques involved in good descriptive writing and how powerful language, adjectives and sensory description can create different effects.

Motivate footy fanatics with pop art

It’s tempting to think that using the World Cup to engage children’s learning has to involve copious amounts of PE. However, making links between football and other subject areas can be a powerful motivator for children whose main interest is sports.

This KS2 football art lesson plan shows how the movements of favourite footballers, combined with pop art, can inspire an eye-catching art project.

KS2 book topic – Kick by Mitch Johnson

Kick by Mitch Johnson focuses on young boy Budi who lives in Jakarta, Indonesia. Instead of going to school he has to work at the local factory making football boots.

This special book covers poverty, child labour and crime, while maintaining an undertone of humour, hope and bravery.

Read the book in class and use these cross-curriculular UKS2 activity ideas to extend children’s understanding of the novel.

Develop decision-making in games

This KS3/4 PE lesson plan is based around improving students’ decision-making skills no matter how chaotic a game gets.

It helps boost skills, confidence and character, while thinking about game-winning tactics as well as technique.

The physics of football

In 1997, Brazilian football player Roberto Carlos’ free kick hooked dramatically to the left and landed in goal. How did he do it?

Watch the video then answer quiz questions and learn more at TEDEd.

Football School writing resources

These KS2 resources were created for the 2018 World Cup but can easily be adapted.

The authors of the Football School series have set pupils an exciting challenge to write a lesson for their favourite subject, but with a World Cup twist. 

Head to the National Literacy Trust website to get the resource, handouts, a poster and printable certificates.

You can also download a Football School activity kit so children can design their own team kit, mascot, crest, stadium and more.

KS3 maths worksheet – percentage changes

This KS3 maths football worksheet asks students to use calculate percentage changes in footballers’ salaries over time.

More ideas and resources

Football reading lists

Check out the National Literacy Trust’s list of recommended football reads for children aged 0-12. We’ve also got our own list of football book recommendations here.

Using football to improve behaviour

Read about how Chris Baylis used Premier League Primary Stars to improve the behaviour of KS1 boys, focusing on the values of respect, fair play and teamwork.

What England footballer Leah Williamson learnt at school

Arsenal and England defender Leah Williamson looks back on the efforts her school made to help her realise her footballing ambitions.

The post Women’s World Cup 2023 – Best football lesson plans, resources and ideas for KS1-KS4 appeared first on Teachwire.

But every school is different – there is no ‘one size fits all’. That’s why PE plans have to be adapted to best serve the changing needs of the pupils. 

Want to improve PE delivery in your school? Revitalise your planning using my top tips:

Maximise active time 

A recommended two hours of physical education per week is simply not enough, especially for kids who are struggling with their health and wellbeing. I would like to see schools offer a statutory two hours and, if not, look at the other ways that physical activity can be included in the school day. Golden Mile or energetic brain breaks offer an excellent opportunity for children to be active on top of PE time. Or set up a breaktime equipment cupboard to help children remain active in between lessons. 

Step outside the timetable 

The timetable is so structured and packed that, for some schools, there’s no scope to branch out during the school day. Look for quick wins such as after-school clubs which encourage children to learn new skills and try something different (especially popular activities such as gymnastics, yoga, or archery, which may be side-lined from curricular PE). 

Skills AND attitude 

PE isn’t just about physical literacy and movement, so make sure that your lessons are an opportunity to develop social skills, emotional literacy and resilience. I encounter children in Years 5 and 6 who still can’t deal with losing. It’s part of life so PE should help them work through that. If they lose a game, look at what went wrong and how they can improve. 

Break the mould 

All too often PE lessons cover the same sports year after year. I encourage schools to offer different sports each year, repeating them at least once. For example, offer tag rugby in Year 3 and again in Year 5. This gives children a wider outlook and is great for skills expansion. It may also encourage kids to join a local club, which could put them into a sport for the rest of their lives. 

Wet weather contingency plan 

When the weather’s bad it’s too easy to pop a dance video on the TV. Instead, plan a serious and physically active alternative. Portable indoor table tennis tables are excellent as they work on skills development, so strategy, hand-eye coordination and communication come into play. 

Parent involvement 

I’ve worked with schools who invite parents to join pupils for the Daily Mile first thing every Friday morning. Get the music playing, invite parents into the playground and create a positive weekly event which unites the entire school community! 

Sport Premium 

Sport Premium should form part of a strategic investment to improve physical literacy school-wide. Try to ensure your funding is spent across all areas. These should include developing your PE curriculum; connecting PE, sport, and physical activity with other curriculum areas; and diversifying your enrichment and competition offer. Look at mass participation opportunities which have the potential to inspire and engage every child in the school. An integrated long-term plan will produce better results than short-term thinking. 

Keep revisiting the plan 

It’s all very well having a plan but it’s crucial to keep assessing its success. Ask yourself: 

• Am I pitching the level too high or low? 
• What are the pupils’ achievements telling me? 
• Do I need to adapt my lesson plans to better suit the children in the class? 
• Do many children participate in a lot of sport outside of school? 
• How can you create maximum impact for children for whom PE is their only exercise each week? 
• Am I catering for the high ability children? Am I supporting the low ability children? 
• Have I tailored my lessons for SEND pupils? 

Less is more with planning. Keep revisiting the basics and ensure the plan is open to modification. That way, you’re in the strongest possible position to succeed. 

Michael Brennan is a former head of PE, and current franchise owner at Premier Education. Follow Premier Education on Twitter @PremEducationUK, and learn more at premier-education.com

The post Teaching PE in primary schools – How to make the perfect plan appeared first on Teachwire.

That said, let’s be clear from the outset – schools, and PE departments in particular, have a responsibility under the Equality Act 2010 to prevent discriminatory participation. Schools must also ensure that students with SEND have access to the same adapted curriculum as other students, and that the same opportunities for learning and
development are promoted to all students equally.

Long gone are the days when one would see SEND students standing on the sidelines officiating, or acting as equipment monitors during lessons. Nowadays, students are bound by ever-expanding curriculum options to demonstrate progress through participation.

Battling misconceptions

Before we look at the PE curriculum itself, it’s worth noting how schools must battle several misconceptions before the planning and implementation of a new curriculum can even begin.

One challenge in recent years has been disengagement among students and parents due to the belief that a child’s motor cognitive skills aren’t appropriate for traditional PE lessons. This form of disengagement is usually supported by parents, and will often lead to alternative provision that ensures the student will rarely, if ever, experience physical activity within a school setting.

Thankfully, however, following the introduction of the Statutory Inclusion Statement in 2003 (since replaced by Education, Health and Care plans) this kind of arrangement would raise significant red flags during a school’s inspection. Curriculums must now be modified to accommodate all students, and any potential barriers to participation removed as part of the curriculum planning process.

As such, the main problem in this area in 2023 is ensuring that parents are on board with schools’ efforts to increase physical activity opportunities for their children, and helping parents overcome the unconscious bias of their own PE experiences decades before.

Curriculum depth

Admittedly, PE does still involve a certain degree of competition-based learning compared to other subjects, with students in mixed ability sets regularly playing games against each other during lessons.

This isn’t the PE that some may remember from the 1980s, though. The subject’s curriculum depth and variety has since increased significantly, with many schools now opting for a choice-driven approach to curriculums at KS4 where students can participate in gym classes, trampolining, table tennis and volleyball, among other activities.

At KS3 there’s now much more emphasis on developing students’ basic motor skills – think catching, throwing and jumping – rather than focusing primarily on their progress in traditional ‘invasion’ games like hockey, football and rugby.

The importance now placed on strength and conditioning in elite sports has trickled down into PE curriculums, with a growing number of schools having on-site gym rooms, thus broadening the range of physical activities students can choose from.

Yet for all that, we can’t pretend that SEND provision in PE is good enough. One statutory requirement is for students with SEND who require TA support to have this in PE lessons. As a PE practitioner for 27 years, I can confirm that this is sadly often not the case, and that students with severe motor coordination difficulties aren’t always accompanied
in lessons.

One can lay the blame for this at the school, but if you dig a little deeper, the problem invariably leads back to central funding cuts, and the necessity to ensure that classrooms are supported by an ever decreasing pool of available TAs.

The TA problem

When I recently ran a Twitter poll asking PE practitioners about the support they saw being provided, only 44% of respondents stated having specific SEND support in place during their PE lessons. PE departments have increasingly had to adapt to teaching students with SEND without the aid of specialist TAs.

At first glance, this would seem like an impossible situation – but what we’ve actually seen is a remarkable evolution of curriculum intent. Curriculums designed around the progress of individual needs with physical activities (such as specific sports) is often now a secondary consideration. Those PE departments that make inclusive education work will thread adapted activities into their curriculum seamlessly, allowing all students to experience physical activity on some level.

One PE department currently on this journey of evolution can be found at Carlton Bolling school in Bradford. Head of PE Paul Brennan initially arrived to find a department where ‘inclusion’ amounted to SEND students acting as assistants to the teacher, rather than learners within the class.

This being far from what Paul wanted, he promptly rewrote the department’s curriculum intent to ensure that all students could take part in warm-ups, and fully participate in adapted drills and games within a mixed ability setting.

Paul has since carefully crafted a second curriculum that runs in parallel with the main curriculum, which enables students to get involved at different points along a specific unit of work. This adapted curriculum employs the STEP model, whereby ‘Space’, ‘Task’, ‘Equipment’ and ‘People’ considerations are mapped out so that student participation
is maximised.

Key to its success is giving SEND students a role within every drill or game – whether it be taking kick off, or taking free hits in a small game of hockey. The department’s adapted curriculum is still in its early stages, but based around a model that’s increasingly being seen as the norm in many PE departments across the country.

After-school issues

And yet, despite the gradual diminishing of barriers to lesson participation, access to extracurricular activities remains a hot topic. Most schools offer an extensive programme of after-school sporting and physical activities, but uptake among SEND students remains low.

This can primarily be down to after-school options being weighted in favour of competitive fixtures and team practice – and with even less availability of support staff, the activities on offer will hence be less varied compared to PE lessons.

After a second Twitter poll canvassing people’s thoughts on extracurricular PE activities specifically for SEND students, I found that an overwhelming 81% of respondents were based at schools that didn’t provide any.

Over time, we’ve learnt that curriculums have to be adapted if they’re to be inclusive. It follows that if we fail to do the same when it comes to extracurricular provision, we simply won’t attract students with SEND to those sessions. For our part, we run a SEND trampolining club once a week – a regular session that initially started with five students, and which now frequently attracts 25+.

Ever-evolving

The PE curriculum continues to evolve at pace, with departments broadening their offerings and developing dual purpose curriculums. Specific support for SEND students is proving to be an ongoing issue, however, in the face of educational cutbacks and the spreading of limited TA capacity across multiple subjects.

As a result, departments are becoming ever more ingenious in their efforts to improve student participation, amid a proliferation of new sports and hybrid activities designed to be non-invasive and non-competitive that strike a chord with students and teachers alike.

Competitive Boccia festivals are now organised by a number of local authorities which successfully draw in most schools – but with these typically only taking place annually, the next step must be to integrate more extracurricular opportunities for SEND students throughout the year.

Finally, it’s worth noting that the vast majority of SEND students participate in PE without any need for an adaptive curriculum, thriving and progressing like any other student. This serves to show how a successful curriculum pathway for SEND students can be both progressive and supportive, depending on the individual needs of the students in question.

Zeph Bennett (@pegeekscorner) is a PE teacher and illustrator, and works as an achievement lead at Werneth High School

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Over the past few years, there’s been a renewed look at the competitive elements of PE, both within formal PE lessons and in extracurricular opportunities. Competition in itself, however, isn’t inherently good or bad. What matters is how that competitive element is fostered and delivered, and how young people are supported through their experiences of it.

We’re seeing a move away from the notion that competition is only ‘for’ certain young people who are traditionally competent and want to play sport outside of school, and towards the view that competition can be effectively delivered to a whole range of young people – so long as an understanding of their motivations and reasons for wanting to participate are at the heart of that delivery.

Creating the culture

In the broadest sense, competition can take place between one person and another, but also within yourself, in the form of achieving your own set of targets and goals. Within the same PE lesson, you might therefore have very different layers of competition taking place simultaneously – some of which may be better suited to certain individuals than others.

Some sports incorporate this really well, such as Ultimate Frisbee and its value scoring of opponents. Players don’t just compete against the other team by scoring points in a traditional sense, but also by awarding them a score based on values they demonstrate during the game, be it teamwork, resilience and so forth. Crucially, those scores contribute to overall competition rankings, so they’re not just a token, but fundamental to what the event is about.

PE teachers are ultimately responsible for creating the atmosphere, culture and environment students will be competing in. If you focus on rewarding certain types of behaviour, don’t be surprised when that’s the type of behaviour students end up exhibiting.

That’s why it’s necessary to understand young people more deeply, and learn how to manage their emotions effectively, rather than simply hoping that the ‘right’ kind of emotions present themselves. Young people in turn need to develop knowledge and understanding on how to deal with those emotions, and will need clarity as to the types of behaviours we want to see from them.

Emotional regulation

With the best will in the world, however, PE teachers can’t be expected to pre-empt everything. There will always be moments when young people struggle to control their emotions – sometimes because of experiences within the lesson itself, a previous encounter elsewhere in school or something at home that’s affecting them. The trigger could come from anywhere.

There are number of things teachers can do to prevent this from giving rise to negative behaviours. They can reinforce the types of behaviours they wish to see in lessons, and set clear expectations from the very start. When designing lessons, they can try to avoid the high pressure situation of having everything hinge on a final all-important match or competition at the end.

Sometimes, the desire to challenge someone else, be better and win can easily spill over into more negative impulses. Instead, teachers can be smarter in how they harness the spirit of competition in their lessons. Rather than tracking the score of a single climactic match, split that match up into halves or quarters so that there are regular opportunities to recognise success in people at different stages.

Role models

For all that young people can struggle to control their emotions, adults can find this difficult too. The lens through which young people see the wider world is now shaped more and more by social media and other outlets that present them with certain role models.

Who those role models are, the people they’re listening to and where they’re getting their advice from is hugely important. That’s why I believe professional sport has a part to play in demonstrating and celebrating great sporting behaviours, but also in calling out poor behaviours.

There’s always going to be a wider context when we see displays of aggressive behaviour in elite level sport, but ultimately, if young people are adopting certain players and competitors with problematic behavioural histories as role models, the relevant sporting bodies and authorities have a responsibility to manage and effectively promote the more positive values they want their sport to be associated with.

That won’t necessarily stop young people from continuing to follow their favourite role models via TV and the internet, but there will ultimately be no more important role models in their lives than the people raising them at home, the friends they play with and the teachers who are teaching them.

The right way to act

Ideally, there ought to be a diverse group of role models who our young people feel they can engage with and learn from. Whatever you’re into and whoever you are, you should be able to see someone who looks like you, or thinks like you, or who you can relate to.

Conversations should take place between teachers and young people in which the latter are encouraged to share sport-related behavioural incidents they’ve seen on TV and elsewhere and talk about them. Together, they can then start to unpack whether it’s the type of behaviour the students want to exhibit.

Part of what a PE teacher does is build conversations around the types of role models that young people are seeing and thinking about. If nothing else, it’s a great learning moment to include within a PE lesson.

The more teachers can talk to young people, support them in respecting themselves and help them understand the aims and purpose of their lessons, the more likely it is that positive behaviours and a better spirit of competition will become reinforced over time.

Good sports

• It’s important for teachers to understand their students’ motivations, and recognise and allow for the different levels of physical literacy, knowledge and confidence each individual student will have regarding general fitness or the activity at hand.
• Teachers can use preparation time ahead of competitive fixtures – or even the bus journey – to focus students’ attention on the behaviours they wish to see, and the success criteria they’ll be looking for.
• Adopting a success criteria that extends no further than simply scoring more points or goals and winning will establish expectations for students to succeed against factors entirely out of their control, such as skilled opposing sides or unfamiliar environments.
• If, instead, this measure of success is based on effective demonstrations of teamwork, particular styles of play or positive approaches to the game, good habits and attitudes will be reinforced over time.

Adam Douglas​ is development officer – sport programmes at the Youth Sport Trust; for more information, visit youthsporttrust.org or follow @youthsporttrust

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Especially when working with younger pupils, having a story or theme, such as aliens and space, supports overall engagement. Not to mention making the lesson fun and exciting.

It also provides opportunity for creativity and cross-curricular links (think maths – deciding what is the best angle at which to throw the ball).

PE national curriculum KS1

The KS1 PE national curriculum states that children should be able to ‘master basic movements including running, jumping, throwing and catching‘, and develop ‘balance, agility and co-ordination, and begin to apply these in a range of activities‘. It also stipulates that pupils should ‘participate in team games, developing simple tactics for attacking and defending‘. PE games KS1 are the ideal way to introduce these skills.

What they’ll learn

• To cooperate and work in small teams effectively (sharing and helping)
• How to safely send and receive an object
• The ability to apply basic rules to activities

Neil Hetherington is the continuous quality improvement manager for Premier Education. He leads on the Curricular Scheme of Work as well as its supporting training and resources.

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Given the wide array of sports that students enjoy – be it badminton, football, rugby, netball, cricket, basketball, hockey or many others – providing them with opportunities to compete against other students is a responsibility that needn’t be the sole preserve of PE staff.

It’s an excellent chance for teachers to involve themselves in something they’re passionate about while building a unique rapport with students – but at the end of an exhausting day for teachers and students alike, team sessions can be quite the challenge. So how can you get the best out of your team?

As a sports coach both inside and outside of school, I have a few thoughts to offer…

1. Set routines

Routines are everything. If you collectively decide that the team should meet at 3.30pm on Wednesdays, stick to it. I’ve seen countless teams lose momentum and players lose interest after staff members have had to cancel or rearrange sessions. If you suspect that you can’t always commit, enlist a colleague who can cover in your absence.

2. Stay focused

Most weeks will involve training sessions rather than matches, so keep everything you do focused on the sport. Ensure that students are doing straight away and practising elements of gameplay. Avoid any lining up, standing and watching – going straight in to active gameplay will see to it that everyone is getting active from the get-go.  

3. Practise decision-making

In every team sport, one thing that participants will constantly be doing is making decisions. To what extent does your training encourage effective decision-making, such as where to pass the ball, where to shoot or where
to run?

4. Keep things small

The smaller the group, the better. I recently calculated that if I have 15 footballers with me for an hour and we only play with one ball, each player will get four minutes on the ball at best, which won’t be enough to develop each player.

If we adjust that to three balls amongst 15 players, now everyone has 12 minutes on the ball. Change it again to five balls, and now everyone has 20 minutes on the ball.

5. Seek marginal gains

I’ve recently started using the ‘10% better’ strategy with the children. I know they work hard, but could they make their gameplay that little bit better?

Outside of training, I’ll share with them an anecdote to try and encourage marginal gains in matches. For example, there’s a great 20-second video analysis of Japan competing in a World Cup which shows how closing the players down led to mistakes and eventually a goal.

I’ve also shown them reports of how ex-England goalkeeper David James would allegedly make mistakes due to his video gaming addiction. Before their next match, the players all told me they hadn’t touched technology that day!

6. Praise and critique

To develop players’ confidence, I’ll ensure there are multiple opportunities for success in training before building to more challenging situations. The team and I will praise individual members for every good thing they do, whilst quietly pointing out something else they could do to make things that little bit better.

Reinforce this by sending positive messages home and you’ll soon have a player who can walk out onto the pitch feeling six feet tall.

7. Assign roles and rewards

Every player has their role. Substitutes support their team mates and collect the ball when it goes out. Some will assume leadership duties, helping with warm-ups and collecting equipment.

After each fixture I’ll then reward the ‘Men of the match’, since acknowledging two players rather than one lets me emphasise the team ethic, whilst also praising some of the more unknown players.

Coaching isn’t easy, but a few simple tricks can help ensure things run smoothly while getting the best out of your players, so that you can hopefully secure some great memories for all of you in the long-run.

Tom Corker (@tom_corker) is a D&T teacher and consultant, technology trust lead and junior football coach

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73% of this drop impacts young people in KS4 alone. Yet these are the young people who are most in need of PE’s transformative powers.

Following the release of the Youth Sport Trust’s ‘Secondary PE – State of the Nation’ report, we wanted to create a picture of the current situation for schools in England. What we found out was dire, to say the least.

Secondary schools are only offering an average of 92 minutes of physical education to KS4. This is well below Ofsted’s recommended 120 minutes per week.

In the northwest, we heard examples where students in Y7 to Y9 were only getting two hours per week of PE for half a term. They were then stopping completely due to rotations with D&T.

Y10 and 11 students

The situation is even worse for Y10 and Y11 students in some schools. In some, Y10s are accessing one hour per week and Y11s are receiving no PE at all.

The issues this causes for students’ physical, social and emotional health and wellbeing are profound. This is especially so when they’re experiencing some of the most stressful years of their adolescent lives.

This is the curriculum schools are being forced to create, due to pressures such as those relating to the EBacc and Progress 8.

Support for schools

Schools tell us they want government to be more vocal on the value of PE. As a charity, we have long been campaigning for better school investment in the subject. We want to support schools in reducing the amount of PE time that’s taken away for other subject interventions.

So how can we start to address these challenges? Senior leaders – consider alternative options when planning interventions and exam preparation. PE staff understand that spaces like sports halls may need to be used for formal and mock exams, but could informal assessments not be hosted elsewhere?

Where Y11 students need additional support, vary the lessons/days when students receive them so that they don’t keep missing PE or after-school clubs. This may send the message that PE is less important than other subjects.

PE teachers – listen to your students, particularly the least active, to help you understand their attitudes and barriers. You can then use this feedback to inform your curriculum design, track the impact and get better engagement. Senior leaders will be interested in this, so show them your results in order to get their buy-in.

James Walker is a Development Manager for Secondary PE at children’s charity the Youth Sport Trust; for more information, visit youthsporttrust.org or follow @youthsporttrust

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Children’s mental health is in crisis in the UK. New data released by the NHS showed that the number of children in England needing treatment for serious mental health problems has risen by 39% in a year and referrals have now passed the one million mark.

Data released in December 2022 by NHS Digital also shows that 18% of children aged seven to 16 years had a probable mental disorder.

This generation has experienced major changes in their lives following the Covid-19 pandemic. On top of this, increased social inequality, online harm and the cost-of-living crisis are creating a ripple effect on young people’s school and home life.

It’s clear that this crisis can no longer be ignored, but with specialist central services at breaking point and schools underfunded to cope, how do we begin to tackle this crisis? 

Building resilience

At the Youth Sport Trust, we believe that we urgently need to shift focus from treatment to prevention, arming children and young people with the tools they need to build resilience and a sense of belonging to stave off depression.  

There is a growing body of evidence to support the mental health and wellbeing impacts of physical activity for children and young people. New data released by Sport England in December 2022 showed that physically literate children and young people are happier and more resilient than non-physically literate peers.

A new study by the University of Hong Kong found that when children participated in at least 50 minutes of sport three times a week, the severity of signs of depression reduced by about a third, with the biggest benefits recorded in those children who had been diagnosed with depression.   

What role can educators play in leveraging PE, play and sport to improve mental health? 

Despite the known benefits, only 47.2% of children and young people (3.4 million) are meeting the Chief Medical Officers’ guidelines of taking part in sport and physical activity for an average of 60 minutes or more every day. Meanwhile, 30.1% (2.2m) do less than an average of 30 minutes a day.  

Schools are uniquely placed to help all families and children, irrespective of economic circumstance, reap the benefits of an active lifestyle. And yet we know that over the last 10 years, 36,244 hours of PE have been lost from the curriculum.

Our research also found that just over half (52%) of practitioners felt that PE, school sport and physical activity are seen as priorities within their schools and over a quarter (26%) disagreed or strongly disagreed with this statement. 

“Schools are uniquely placed to help all families and children, irrespective of economic circumstance, reap the benefits of an active lifestyle.”

Support for schools

The Youth Sport Trust is committed to helping schools better support active lifestyles through world-class physical education programmes, extra-curricular enrichment and through an active curriculum.

During 2022 we trained over 13,000 education professionals and over 80,000 young people, with almost a quarter of a million young people taking part in an activity made possible through our work. 

This March, we’re inviting hundreds of educational professionals to attend our 2023 Conference at the Telford International Centre. The conference will feature experts from the health sector, government, activists with lived experience and specialists in their field. 

Keynote speakers include rower and Benjamin Franklin Award-winning author Arshay Cooper, the protagonist of the critically acclaimed film A Most Beautiful Thing, who will share his story of how he formed the first all-black high school rowing team in America.  

Zach Weston, clinician, educator, health system administrator and entrepreneur will join us to explain the science behind movement and brain function, looking differently at addressing inactivity through adoption of the Canadian 24-hour movement model. 

And we will also be joined by Dr Alex George, former A&E now TV doctor and Youth Mental Health Ambassador, 10 Downing Street, and author of A Better Day, the positive mental health handbook for children.

The full conference agenda is packed with two keynote speeches, 12 bookable workshops, three live podcast recordings, and a ‘big debate’ featuring education and policy heavyweights.

The post Children’s mental health: “It’s time to move from treatment to prevention” appeared first on Teachwire.

It’s a view supported by findings from The Royal Society for Public Health and The Children’s Society’s ‘Good Children Report 2022’ – the latter of which revealed a deeply concerning continual decline in children’s wellbeing.

The report highlights in particular how the pandemic prevented young people from physically interacting with friends at a crucial point in their psychosocial development, which in turn contributed to an existing downward trend in their levels of mental health.

Beneficial outcomes

It’s important to remember that even before the onset of COVID-19, growing numbers of youngsters were already showing high rates of emotional distress and fragility, which hindered their capacity for overcoming threats to their wellbeing.

This apparent lack of resilience – the learned capability to adapt to adversity – has coincided with steadily increasing pressures and expectations on young people, including exam workloads, over-protective parenting, peer pressure and social deprivation. The pandemic may have been an unprecedented challenge of global proportions, but it served to reveal – and indeed, exacerbate – the limited resilience of young people to being able to adapt to change.

Public health institutions have long pointed to the health and wellbeing benefits to be had by exposing young people to outdoor adventure. Even short periods of time spent in nature can significantly improve a young person’s levels of mental health. Five minutes of exercise in an urban green space can be enough to boost their physical and mental wellbeing by fostering ‘biophilia’ – an individual’s sense of innate connection to nature.

There continues to be a broad evidence base suggesting that outdoor adventure experiences in natural spaces can contribute significantly to young people’s holistic development, with residential trips being a key tool for delivering such experiences.

They can give rise to many beneficial outcomes, a number of which appear to be retained over time, including increased independence, improved confidence, greater self-belief, the development of effective coping strategies, sociability, and improvements in both long-term memory and problem-solving, among others. These can all feed into and build an individual’s reserves of resilience.

‘Surviving’ to ‘thriving’

When we speak of ‘resilient behaviour’, we’re referring to a spectrum that can range from ‘surviving’ to ‘thriving’. For individuals with limited prior experiences to draw upon, the prospect of having to deal with an apparently dangerous or threatening situation will trigger a survival response that’s likely to be accompanied by heightened emotions and difficulties in making decisions.

That said, similar reactions may also occur in the face of activities that fail to stimulate interest and restrict autonomy. The sweet spot entails activities that will invigorate our emotions, yet also encourage us to think more clearly; tasks which see us draw on our existing memories in order to create new ones, and which are open-ended, promote choice and offer personal support.

The post-pandemic return to school gave young people a safe place in which to mend, move and once again meet people – but there’s arguably only so much re-conditioning that can be achieved in the context of the classroom where routines and consistency are rigorously applied. For a student in a slump, going through the same motions each day may even compound the problem.

Conversely, outdoor adventure learning can provide them with authentic, meaningful experiences in which they’ll be challenged to build a repertoire of behaviours through facing their fears. These learned skill sets – which can variously include physical skills, health knowledge, the development of social support networks and wider attentional focus – can then be called upon when a future situation of uncertainty demands it. But, how is this adaptive capability built through outdoor adventure learning?

Scaled risk-taking

Resilience is ultimately achieved by young people taking risks. Without that element of risk being involved, resilience won’t enter the picture. What outdoor adventure activities are great at is offering a blend of negative emotions – the sensation of feeling scared, or unstable in the moment – counterbalanced by positive emotions stemming from a sense of achievement or triumph. Both are essential underpinnings for the ‘steeling effect’ that ensures young people are better prepared to handle more significant risks in future.

The challenges in question will need to be invigorating, interesting and personally meaningful enough for individuals to overcome perceived threats to their wellbeing, without presenting seemingly insurmountable barriers to their achievement.

It’s this careful scaling of intelligent risk-taking that facilitates young people being able to successfully deal with risk exposure, while also delivering meaningful learning. On the flipside, activities which serve to overprotect young people and restrict their exposure to risk-taking and engagement with the outdoors may wear away their resilience.

Critics of outdoor learning have argued that any positive outcomes arising from such experiences will be largely based upon untested assumptions that ‘the outdoors works’. They will contest that exposure to outdoor activities doesn’t build positive characteristics in young people through some automatic process, but rather serves up situations in which individuals will experience short-term novelty, or feel compelled to take part – with the result that any developmental outcomes won’t readily transfer over to everyday settings.

Adaptive quality

While it’s true that outdoor adventure learning is certainly no magic bullet capable of ‘fixing’ young people, robust studies have shown that it can and does deliver meaningful educational outcomes when deployed in exciting, natural settings that build assorted other strengths in young people.

This adaptive quality allows people used to learning in multi-sensory environments – where situations aren’t uniform and predictable – to perform better across a range of physical and cognitive tasks, compared to those attending uni-sensory settings.

What’s more, those outdoor residential programmes that report the most impactful and long-lasting benefits tend to be those that tailor their activities to meet the needs of different learners. For example, collaborations between outdoor adventure facilitators and secondary school teachers can give rise to the successful embedding of qualities associated with a school’s ethos in a programme’s design.

This approach has previously allowed children to plan some of their activities ahead of time; connect outdoor learning to curriculum subjects; become more familiar with their school’s expectations; undertake independent risk-taking; and review natural emerging experiences.

To consolidate their learning, children have been encouraged to move from describing outcomes and applying basic problem-solving to appraising and presenting an understanding of skills needed to achieve in school. Given the mental health problems of young people outlined at the outset, arguably, it has never been more important to facilitate opportunities for them to be immersed in outdoor adventure.

From passive to active

Many children struggle when making the transition from primary to secondary school, or even to a new year group. Pupils who are able to participate in an outdoor residential programme as part of their induction have been shown in studies to have significantly improved preparedness for challenges presented by secondary school – so here’s how to make the most of your transition trip:

Involve teachers ahead of time
Work with your provider on the outcomes you need, and ensure they’re introduced in the classroom ahead of the trip

Give pupils responsibility for the trip
Plan how they can review their experiences or collect data during activities for a project back at school

Show pupils what they’ll be studying
Think about how their ‘new’ studies of discrete subjects – English, maths or PE, for example – can be introduced through the residential experience

Encourage co-operation
Early on, get children working together in groups so they can build relationships and share experiences

John Allan is head of learning and impact at the outdoor activities provider, Kingswood, having been a lead academic and outdoor practitioner in sports pedagogy, psychology and adventure education for more than 25 years; for more information, visit kingswood.co.uk

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Does it conjure memories of teenage arcades and greasy chips?

Well, this version will get hearts pumping and encourage pupils to think about all sorts of important sporting elements, such as timing; fair play and rules; strength and intensity of movement; aim, and much more.

Tournaments add a sense of competition, and music to punctuate each section’s pace creates an exciting atmosphere.

Ready, set, rally!

What they’ll learn

• Hand-eye coordination
• Balance
• Muscular endurance and identification of key muscles involved in the activity
• Strategic decision making and consideration of how to outwit an opponent

Ben Holden is head of physical education at High Tunstall College of Science, a senior teacher, SLT, and NPQSL. His bestselling book Wanna Teach PE? (£18.99, Scholary) is out now.

The post PE games KS2 – improve agility with an air hockey rally appeared first on Teachwire.