Canny Kitchen’s family food: tips and recipe

TheSchoolBus blog this week is brought to you by our new catering and cookery expert contributor, The Canny Kitchen… Let’s get cooking!

Encouraging young people to get involved with cooking and try out new, healthy foods can be an experiment in itself. Here are a few Canny Kitchen tips for you to try to help your pupils engage with, and be excited about, their food:

1. Try a new healthy food at least once a week

Every week, why not ask one of your pupils to go shopping with a parent and choose one healthy food they’ve never tried before and then bring it in to cook in class? It’s a good idea to encourage them to combine it with a food they know they like.

2. Ask pupils to look for ‘special offer’ fruits and vegetables at their local supermarket or greengrocer every week

Ask pupils to find a food they’ve never tried to eat or cook with before each week for £1. Then look for a recipe that could include this ‘new’ ingredient – a recipe that sounds tasty and fun to make with your pupils; maybe have a look on the internet (such as on the BBC Good Food website). Then make the dish together for them to take home and serve to the whole family − maybe at the weekend or during a school holiday − and just see how much your pupils will enjoy this and look forward to doing it again, in school and at home.

3. Start to grow your own herbs together

Encourage your pupils to visit the local garden centre with a parent and choose herbs, such as mint, rosemary, thyme, parsley, and chives, and plant either on your classroom windowsill or in pots in the school grounds. You and your pupils can also enjoy using them in homemade soups and stews!

Image from Canny Kitchen

The Canny Kitchen’s 12 tips for making food fun, healthy and economical for children (and adults)!

1. Make apple ‘thins’ for pupils as a snack – finely sliced apples, dusted in cinnamon and baked until crisp make a great healthy snack.
2. Put half a banana on a lolly stick, roll in chopped nuts and freeze, to make a great cooling and healthy snack.
3. Get in the regular habit of encouraging pupils to help make their own meals at home.
4. As young children’s palates are fairly simple, keep everything separate on their plate so that they can decide how to eat it.
5. Present foods in an amusing way – roll rice into balls, make a face on the plate, serve fruit salad in paper cups.
6. Get pupils to help make up a ‘picnic’ of healthy foods − savoury and sweet and put a picnic tablecloth and special picnic-style plates, bowls and cups on the table for them to help themselves to foods.
7. Children find miniature foods appealing – like pitta pizzas, mini pancakes, mini shaped sandwiches and mini muffins.
8. Let pupils choose their own cutlery − form a container of knives, forks and spoons and get them to help set the table (take turns with this task).
9. Get pupils to help make up a mixed fresh juice drink – well diluted with water. Keep this in the refrigerator for when they are thirsty (just stir well each time before serving).
10. Involve the pupils in preparing fruit salad or fruit slices or chunks (so much more fun, quick and cheaper than buying ready-made fruit pots).
11. Don’t have ready-made ‘pop’, squash or carbonated drinks available (if they aren’t available, no one will have them). Instead, serve chilled tap water, well-diluted fruit juice or milk, and if they like a sparkling drink for a treat why not combine a little fruit juice or slices of fresh fruits with sparkling bottled water?
12. Make up a large amount of bolognese-type minced beef from scratch and separate into a few batches, label, chill for an hour or so, and freeze in containers. Later, defrost in refrigerator and make into chilli con carne, pasta bolognese, lasagne etc.

Recipe: Baked Chicken in a Creamy Tomato Sauce with Fresh Pasta

(Suitable to freeze after cooking before adding pasta)

(Serves 4)

Ingredients

4 x large chicken breast fillets (sliced into roughly 3 pieces per breast fillet)

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 tins premium chopped tomatoes in juice or one large bottle/jar passata

1 medium onion (finely chopped)

1 tablespoon chopped fresh herbs e.g. basil, or half a teaspoon of dried oregano, basil or mixed herbs

1 teaspoon garlic purée

1 tablespoon tomato purée

Salt, white pepper and freshly ground black pepper (mill) to taste

1 teaspoon chilli flakes or lazy chilli in oil

4 large button mushrooms (optional) (sliced and fried in a little oil − cooked and browned in advance)

1 large green or yellow pepper (optional) (diced and cooked in a little water in microwave in advance)

Approx. 500g fresh pasta (e.g. Tagliatelli)

Approx. 250g double cream (not whipped)

Fresh basil leaves to serve (optional)

Freshly grated parmesan cheese and freshly baked garlic bread to serve + pepper mill

Method

Pre-heat the oven to gas mark 6/200 degrees centigrade and place the sliced chicken breast fillets onto a baking tray covered with tin foil.

Drizzle some olive oil and seasoning onto the chicken and then add the chilli flakes or lazy chilli to each slice. Cover fully with foil and bake in the oven for approx. 20 to 25 minutes, until cooked through.

Meanwhile, make up the tomato sauce by sweating the finely chopped onion in olive oil in a large pan, adding the garlic purée, then adding the chopped tinned tomatoes or passata, herbs and seasoning. Simmer for 15 minutes, stirring regularly, and then blend with a stick blender until smooth. Stir in the cooked mushrooms and cooked peppers and then remove from the heat and stir in the double cream. Gently heat the sauce for a minute or two and check for seasoning.

Remove the cooked chicken from the oven and fold in to the sauce in the pan (including juices). Garnish with fresh basil leaves.

Fold the chicken in sauce into the cooked fresh pasta and serve with freshly milled black pepper, freshly grated parmesan cheese and baked garlic bread slices.

BON APPETIT!

 

Beating back-to-school bullying

It’s the beginning of a new school year, and while this can be an exciting time for fresh-faced new pupils, as well as returning pupils, it’s easy to admit that after six weeks of ‘freedom’, the return to school following the summer holidays isn’t exactly eagerly anticipated by all pupils (not to mention staff).

However, complaints about the return of the early morning routine and the structured daily timetable pale into insignificance with the revelation of some shocking new research showing that 45 percent of the 10 million UK pupils returning to school this week will be returning to routine, daily bullying – certainly enough to instil dread into any child.

Not only this, but the figures, from the Diana Award Charity, also showed that 24 percent of pupils admitted to suicidal thoughts as a result of the bullying, and 70 percent often look to change their appearance and self-presentation to prevent themselves from being bullied.¹

Image from Graphicstock

The tip of the iceberg

The results are no anomaly – many people for whom primary and high school is just a distant memory still find it hard to forget their school bully. But while bullying 20 years ago is no less harmful than it is today, the new age of technology has made children increasingly vulnerable to bullying on more different platforms than ever.

Last month, the Children’s Society’s annual Good Childhood report found that UK pupils were among the most unhappy pupils at school due to bullying. The cause of pupils’ unhappiness ranging from being hit by other pupils, to feeling left out, to low self-esteem due to appearance.²

Who’s to blame?

As a result of the new Diana Award findings, schools are in the firing line for not doing enough to protect their pupils from bullying and prevent their pupils from bullying others.

“Our research shows that schools are failing to keep young people safe and happy, and that is unacceptable. For a child to feel suicidal because of the treatment they have had at school is totally unacceptable,” said Alex Holmes, head of the Diana Award anti-bullying campaign.

This echoes the sentiment of the quote from Matthew Reed, Chief Executive of the Children’s Society, following their own findings a month ago: “It is deeply worrying that children in this country are so unhappy at school compared to other countries, and it is truly shocking that thousands of children are being physically and emotionally bullied, damaging their happiness. School should be a safe haven, not a battleground.”

These are only a couple of quotes among many holding schools highly responsible for the happiness of their pupils; however, schools are battling against the new and accelerating impacts of social media, the regular media, and social pressures. Government and school assessments, celebrity culture and the boastful nature of social media can all see young children feeling like failures before they even leave primary school. Not only that, but with the rise of ‘banter’ the lines between bullying and ‘joking’ are becoming increasingly blurred, making it more difficult to identify. One teacher from Norfolk resorted to banning the word banter from the classroom because he believed his pupils were using the term to ‘legitimise bullying’.³

While the mounting statistics and news articles are disturbing, especially as they coincide with the increase of mental health issues in young people, surely there should be a more positive impact of such negative information than simply pointing the finger and prescribing the blame?⁴ So, what can you do to help prevent bullying?

How to beat back-to-school bullying

According to anti-bullying campaign Anti-Bullying Pro, “one of the most important things that a school needs to have to help combat bullying is an effective and anonymous way to report it.” Some ideas include anonymous email addresses or phone numbers and ‘bully boxes’: locked boxes with a slot through which pupils can post anonymous reports of bullying. Once these measures are in place, it’s important to make all students aware of them and make them feel comfortable to use these channels.

The Diana Awards, the overhead charity of Anti-Bullying Pro, run an Anti-Bullying Ambassadors programme, a series of training events, which teaches pupils the skills they need to be responsible for raising awareness of bullying, leading campaigns, promoting kindness and ensuring their peers stay safe both online and offline. Having a peer-led approach to tackling bullying can help everyone feel responsible, as part of a team, for stopping bullying.

The Anti-Bullying Pro website hosts lots of helpful information about how to deal with bullying.

Here’s what Anti-Bullying Pro advise you do if a pupil approaches you about being bullied:

• Reassure the pupil that you are there to help and that coming to you was the right thing to do.
• Ask them to explain their situation, how they are being bullied, and how often they are being bullied, to allow you to determine whether the action constitutes bullying.

Advice to give the pupil:

• Don’t retaliate to the bully, especially in a way that will get them in trouble.
• Come up with a positive coping mechanism (you can help them with this), for instance, counting to ten when bullying occurs.
• Remove themselves from the situation as soon as possible and go to a safe place/find someone they trust/go to an anti-bullying ambassador (if you have them) or member of staff.
• Find out who the anti-bullying ambassadors/staff are in the school and acquire their help.
• Ask them how you can help and what they would like you to do – give them a sense of ownership over the situation.
• Report the bullying to the appropriate member of staff.
• When dealing with the pupil accused of the bullying, make sure you act in accordance with your school’s Anti-Bullying Policy, and with the victim’s request.

You may also want to consider:

• Weekly/daily meetings, until the situation improves.
• Advising the pupil of somewhere they can go to talk to someone at any time.
• Reporting the bullying to parents (depending on the severity).
• Encouraging the pupil to buddy-up with a trusted pupil.
• Encouraging the pupil to keep a diary/log of the bullying.
• Encouraging the pupil to engage in activities they enjoy, to take their mind off it.
• Involving the pupil in a lunchtime activity to keep them away from the bully and encourage them to have fun.⁵

Bullying can continue even after staff have intervened, so it is imperative to follow up any instances reported to you.

The key message resonating throughout professional anti-bullying advice is to make pupils aware that they are not alone, and that they can talk to you about their problems. The Anti-Bullying Alliance emphasises communication as a vital part of tackling bullying: “Never suffer in silence.”⁶

Following on from their research, The Children’s Society has called for the government to require schools to provide counselling for pupils, and has urged schools to help children’s wellbeing by tackling bullying and promoting physical exercise.

Also, with the approach of anti-bullying week, Anti-Bullying Pro have begun a #back2school twitter campaign to raise bullying awareness, which has seen hundreds of people sharing their school photographs and experiences of bullying to highlight and enforce that anti-bullying motto, “never suffer in silence”.

[1] BT (2015) ‘Bullying at school happens to 45% of children every day’ <https://home.bt.com/news/uk-news/bullying-at-school-happens-to-45-of-children-every-day-11364001178453> [Accessed: 02 September 2015]

[2] Sally Weale (2015) ‘English children among the unhappiest in the world at school due to bullying’ <http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/aug/19/english-children-among-unhappiest-world-widespread-bullying> [Accessed: 02 September 2015]

[3] Richard Haugh (2015) ‘Should banter be banned?’ <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-30234121> [Accessed: 02 September 2015]

[4] Ami Sedghi (2015) ‘What is the state of children’s mental health today?’ <http://www.theguardian.com/society/christmas-charity-appeal-2014-blog/2015/jan/05/-sp-state-children-young-people-mental-health-today> [Accessed: 02 September 2015]

[5] Anti-Bullying Pro (2015) ‘Frequently Asked Questions for Staff’ <http://www.antibullyingpro.com/staff-support> [Accessed: 02 September 2015]

[6] Anti-Bullying Alliance (2015) ‘Advice: Children & Young People’ <http://www.anti-bullyingalliance.org.uk/advice/children-young-people/> [Accessed: 02 September 2015]

School skirts: to ban or not to ban?

Uniforms are the centre of an age-old debate; are they good or bad? Do they help or inhibit learning? Do they prevent bullying? Are they more practical for families? The questions go on. But now, school skirts are stealing the focus, raising questions like; how short is too short? Who’s to blame for the hitched up hemlines? And what can, and should, be done about inappropriate skirt length?

Some schools have blamed the fashion industry for pupils’ disregard for appropriate dress; however, generations of women (and men) are likely to remember conversations with their own parents about how much skin on show is too much. But now, a new disturbing light is being shed on the debate, as schools are beginning to regard skirt length as a safeguarding issue rather than a disciplinary matter.

Scapegoating safeguarding issues

Currently, around 63 schools across England have completely banned their female pupils from wearing skirts.¹ Their reasoning includes guidance on skirt length being repeatedly ignored and time that could be spent on teaching and learning being wasted addressing skirt issues. However, the headteacher of a school recently joining the ranks of school skirt prohibitionists has added another one to the list, saying:

“It’s not pleasant for male members of staff, and students either, if the girls [wearing short skirts] have to walk upstairs and sit down. After a while, it stops being a uniform issue and starts becoming a safeguarding issue.”²

While some arguments for banning school skirts may have an understandable foundation (i.e. addressing skirt issues could eat into lesson time, impacting teaching and learning), it is concerning to hear that not only are a pupil’s bare legs being dubbed a safeguarding issue because they make their male teachers, the people responsible for safeguarding them, uncomfortable, but that the pupils themselves are the ones being apportioned the blame for the arising safeguarding issue.

Another school enforced their ban following an incident where a male member of staff was left feeling uncomfortable after a female pupil met his uniform challenge with the remark “You shouldn’t be looking at my legs”. (Stanford, 2015) The incident suggests that the school skirt debate can be a double-edged sword, if students are found playing on social sensitivities as an excuse for breaking school rules.

However, in each case, surely there is a bigger issue at hand, with a blanket ban on skirts only a superficial and unfair solution to a much more deep-rooted issue, echoing elements of the wider feminist debate over women’s clothing. And surely a school is the best setting to educate pupils on these issues rather than brush them under a rug?

Blanket bans

Schools should be wary of the ‘simple solution’, because it doesn’t always prove to be the best. While this may limit the potential for safeguarding issues within the school’s grounds arising from school skirt length, it’s an unrealistic representation of life beyond school.

It’s an unfortunate truth that female pupils will likely go on to work environments where their dress choices will be heavily scrutinised. Isn’t it preferable to teach female pupils about appropriate dress in business and work situations, rather than force them to wear “business-like trousers” on all occasions for fear of provoking male attention? (Stanford, 2015)

Not only this, but an element of discrimination could be argued if females’ bare legs are being scrutinised when males’ are not, for instance, when on the school sports field. If a school implements a policy disadvantaging females or males this is a case of indirect discrimination. While indirect discrimination can sometimes be legal if a good enough reason for it can be proved in court, schools are still at risk of angering parents and disheartening pupils.³ Some parents have already complained that it’s a “minority ruining it for everyone”.⁴

Schools also put themselves at risk of backlash over double-standards if their clamp down on school skirts is furious enough to fuel a policy overhaul, but their worries about the height of male pupils’ waistlines barely raises a whisper.

A better way?

It’s easier said than done to say simply set out a strict uniform policy and successfully enforce it throughout your school. Although some schools are steaming ahead with their bans on school skirts, others have made U-turns on the decision to search for a better way to tackle inappropriate dress.

One school is taking a focus-group approach, reaching out to parents, students, staff and governors to try and determine the best way to tackle the sensitive situation. Other schools are allowing pupils only to wear skirts from selected providers at a standard shape and length.

It’s not a quick solution, but isn’t it better to spend the time finding a way to properly enforce a fair uniform policy, than to use the short term solution, and risk discriminating against female pupils, while also failing to address the real issues at hand?

¹ School Skirt Ban, ‘Welcome to schoolskirtban.co.uk’ <http://www.schoolskirtban.co.uk/site/> [Accessed: 3 August 2015]

² Peter Stanford (2015) ‘School skirts – the long and short of it’ <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/11775014/School-skirts-the-long-and-short-of-it.html> [Accessed: 3 August 2015]

³ Citizens Advice, ‘Indirect discrimination’ <https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/discrimination/what-are-the-different-types-of-discrimination/indirect-discrimination/> [Accessed: 3 August 2015]

⁴ BBC news (2015) ‘Plymstock School skirt ban over hemline row’ <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-33387144> [Accessed: 3 August 2015]

Budget 2015: Earn vs. Learn

Since the government released details of their ‘emergency’ summer budget they have been both criticised for “failing the young”, but also praised for introducing a “budget for the working people” – depending on which newspaper you choose to read.

Whichever way you look at it, the young people set to leave school in 2016-17, asking themselves “What do I want to do with the rest of my life?”, will be in a heightened, pressurised position due to the new budget.

Disadvantaging the disadvantaged?

The most fundamental changes to the budget include an increase to the national living wage, which will rise to £7.20 next April, and should reach £9 by 2020. This was surprising but (somewhat) welcome news in George Osbourne’s budget announcement. [1] So, what’s the catch? It excludes under 25s, and together with the cuts made to the welfare budget − which includes a freeze on working-age benefits, tax credits and local housing allowance until 2020 − the reform is estimated to cost 3 million families an average of £1000 a year. [2]

“The key fact is that the increase in the minimum wage simply cannot provide full compensation for the majority of losses that will be experienced by tax credit recipients.”

− Paul Johnson, director of the Institute of Fiscal Studies.

Another major introduction with the budget was the ‘youth obligation’, which says 18 to 21-year-olds must ‘earn or learn’, rather than sign-up for benefits after leaving school. Young people who don’t find work or education will be expected to gain work-based skills through an apprenticeship, traineeship or work-based placement, or they will lose their benefits.

While this could potentially produce positive effects, it may also be a threatening prospect for those from poorer backgrounds, considering that the automatic entitlement to housing benefit has essentially been scrapped, and that last year those under 25 missed out on most of the apprenticeships on offer.[3]

Alongside this, university students will no longer be able to claim maintenance grants. The entirety of their student finance will come in the form of a loan, but larger loans are up for grabs, meaning more debt.[4]

So, with all these factors laid out on the same page, it seems that when the pupils of today come to leave school, in particular disadvantaged pupils, they will be faced with two options: accumulate thousands of pounds worth of debt for the chance at a higher paid job later in life, or attempt to go into a low-paying apprenticeship with the potential to climb the ladder over time. It’s safe to assume that for a lot of disadvantaged pupils neither of these options may be viable, so what happens to them?

Public sector pay rise cap

The breakdown of the new budget shows that the government is set to spend a total of £742.3bn on the public sector in 2015-16, with £99bn of that on education, third in the ranking below welfare and health. Despite this, school teachers and leaders still fall victim to a cap on public sector pay rises, which limits them to a one percent pay rise annually over the next four years. Therefore, the budget’s effect could extend further than those pupils leaving school, and to those still in school.[5] Unions are concerned that an announcement like this, amidst the ‘teaching crisis’, will make recruitment and retainment harder. This, together with a rise in pupil numbers, could have a knock-on effect that leaves more pupils with fewer teachers, and according to evidence highlighted by the Chair of Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, excellent teachers are already thin on the ground for poorer pupils.[6]

Earn don’t learn?

In the run-up to the election, we saw a lot of emphasis on ‘skills, skills, skills!’ with parties attempting to trump one another with regards to the number of apprenticeships they could offer young people. These factors of the new budget seem to further deter young people from university and towards a more vocational method of attaining working-life skills and knowledge.

With all this in mind, it could seem that the government want school leavers to earn rather than learn. While this could be a short-term solution to solving the deficit problem, it does cast doubt over what sort of society we will have in the future if people with potential have been denied the opportunity to further their education.

Coming to the end of this article, it feels like there is a dark cloud looming over school leavers; however, while the future may look like a complex web of ‘what ifs’ and ‘buts’, schools can still work their hardest to prepare their pupils to face these tough life-decisions at the end of school-life, and to face the results that incur as they progress further and further into adult life.

If you haven’t already, perhaps now is a good time to ensure your school’s careers advice is up-to-scratch!

TheSchoolBus has a number of resources to help schools make it through this squeeze on the budget. We have a topic dedicated to careers guidance, which contains research, guidance and templates. We also make recruitment and retainment less of a strain with our job descriptions for teaching and support staff and staff management guidance and templates.

This will surely not be the end of the discussion in the media, so make sure you have your say in the comments section below.

[1] UK Politics (2015) ‘Budget 2015 key points: At-a-glance summary’ <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-33440315> [Accessed: 13 July 2015]

[2] Heather Stewart and Patrick Wintour (2015) ‘George Osbourne took ‘much more from the poor’ in budget’< http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/10/george-osborne-took-much-more-from-poor-budget-2015-ifs> [Accessed: 14  July 2015]

[3] Sally Weale and France Perraudin (2015) ‘Osbourne accused of picking on young people with ‘earn or learn’ budget’ <http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/jul/08/budget-2015-grants-poorer-university-students-scrapped-loans> [Accessed: 13 July 2015]

[4] Anoosh Chakelian (2015) ‘Budget 2015: what welfare changes did George Osbourne announce, and what do they mean?’ <http://www.newstatesman.com/staggers/2015/07/budget-2015-what-welfare-changes-did-george-osborne-announce-and-what-do-they-mean> [Accessed: 13 July 2015]

[5] Kaye Wiggins (2015) ‘Teachers’ pay rises limited to 1 per cent for four years’ <https://www.tes.co.uk/news/school-news/breaking-news/teachers-pay-rises-limited-1-cent-four-years> [Accessed: 13 July 2015]

[6] Javier Espinoza (2015) ‘’Turbo-charge’ young teachers’ careers to get them to teach in tough schools, says social mobility tsar’ <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/11734661/Turbo-charge-young-teachers-careers-to-get-them-to-teach-in-tough-schools-says-social-mobility-tsar.html> [Accessed: 13 July 2015]

The Labour Party’s Education Policy

A gold-standard red party?

Please note, this article does not represent the political views of either HCSS Hub or any members of TheSchoolBus editorial team, including the author of this particular piece, and should not be taken as such.

A little history

Since its formation in 1900, the Labour Party has been in and out of government and opposition, and has laid claim to a number of achievements, including the establishment of the National Health Service, protection of equal opportunities, and the introduction and maintenance of the welfare state, which still make up part of society today.

Main pledges in the manifesto

The Labour Party argues that education is due for improvement. Through investing and reforming education, in an attempt to raise teaching standards, Labour wants to achieve the ‘best possible start’ for all children. Their key aims are to ‘give every child a good start’, raise school and college standards, increase opportunities for young people, such as in career paths, and ensure there are also options available for pupils pursuing vocational routes, rather than academic.

The main promises the Labour Party has made to the education sector in its manifesto are to:

• Protect the education budget for 0-19-year-olds, so it rises in line with inflation.
• Cut university tuition fees to £6,000 a year.
• Ensure all primary schools guarantee access to childcare from 8am to 6pm.
• Cap class sizes at 30 for 5, 6 and 7-year-olds.

The theory is that cutting tuition fees will alleviate the burden of debt hanging over students in the country, and in turn, increase the opportunities available to young people.

In order to fund the proposed reduction of class sizes, Labour would scrap the Free Schools programme, which was introduced by the Coalition Government following the 2010 general election and has created over 230,000 school places since its implementation.

School standards       

While the Conservative Party has focussed on the Free Schools programme, the Labour Party’s approach would be to focus on the improvement of existing schools. The party has placed greater emphasis on school standards through the media.

A Labour government would make it compulsory for all teachers in state schools to be qualified, and to engage in high quality continued professional development in order to nurture their skills.

It would also introduce ‘Directors of School Standards’ into every local authority, who would monitor school performance and intervene in schools in need of improvement and support. Vocational education would form a more prominent part of school and college curriculum with the creation of a new Technical Baccalaureate for 16- to 19-year-olds − a combination of a level 3 qualification and a work placement.

The party plans to address the current shortage of headteachers by creating a school leadership institute, with the help of headteacher associations, which would accredit heads with a new ‘gold standard’ qualification.

Ofsted overhaul

As part of a strategy to improve the evaluation of school performance, and henceforth, raise schools standards, the shadow education secretary, Tristram Hunt, has said that Labour would call for education watchdog Ofsted to recruit teachers and headteachers to undertake accredited peer-to-peer evaluations, and for Ofsted to take on a back seat role in ensuring fair assessment.

This is part of the “far-reaching reform” of Ofsted that the shadow education secretary has said a Labour government would carry out.

Careers  

Another main talking point of Labour’s, in terms of education, has been careers advice and apprenticeships. It was a decision of the Coalition Government to scrap compulsory work experience for 14- to 16-year-olds, and Labour intend to reverse this.

With a larger focus on vocational, as well as academic career routes, the party has proposed to give face-to-face careers advice to pupils from the age of 11, including advice on high-quality apprenticeships and technical degrees as well as more traditional academic routes to university.

The Labour Party leader, Ed Miliband, has also promised apprenticeships to every school leaver who achieves two A-levels or the equivalent by 2020. The stated theory behind this strategy is that better training and higher wages would boost productivity.

Possibilities

It is common for political rivals to criticise one another’s plans for carrying out their promises, and the Labour Party has received its fair share of criticism. With all of these ideas and promises only making up a part of the manifesto, a Labour government would have a lot of expectations to live up to, but so would their competitors.

Change seems to be a key theme running through their education manifesto, meaning that some of the work of the Coalition Government over the last four years will be largely reformed or scrapped. Whether this would prove effective or destructive could only be proved over time.

The general election has approached thick and fast, and there isn’t much longer to wait. If you would like to find out more about the other main parties’ education manifestos, please take a read of the other blogs in our election series.

Food for Thought

“A hungry or emotional child cannot develop physically, mentally or emotionally. Healthy eating habits provide the optimum mental and physical health for children and, once established, last a lifetime.”

– Dr Yibo Wood, USA Government Department of Agriculture Nutritionist.

Childhood obesity is at an all-time high. New figures show that one in ten primary school starters are already obese at the young age of four or five, and twenty percent are obese by the time they leave primary school.

Experts warn of a disastrous end and have called for more PE lessons in the hope that more exercise is the resolution. Although it is proven that a stringent and effective physical education programme can have a positive effect on the health and wellbeing of pupils, perhaps the experts are ignoring a key factor in childhood obesity by proposing this as the most viable, if not only, plan of action – lack of knowledge.

Some may assume it is widely known that diet goes hand in hand with exercise for people attempting to lose weight; however, the evidence suggests that a lot of people, especially children, are unaware of the importance of nutrition, not only in battling obesity but in healthy physical and mental development. The way that children interact with food in their early years can build relationships with food that will stay with them for life.

However, it’s not all doom and gloom! Today, Thursday 5 March, is International School Meals Day. The annual event, managed by Children in Scotland and backed by organisations from all across the UK and USA, aims to raise awareness of the importance of the nutritional qualities of school meal programmes worldwide. All across the globe, children and adults in education will be celebrating food and healthy living in the education environment.

A few ways schools, organisations, governing bodies, catering companies and anyone with an interest can get involved include:

• Having an International Menu Day.
• Hosting food tasting sessions.
• Hosting internationally themed cooking activities.
• Dedicating lessons to healthy eating topics.
• Holding fund-raising activities for charities that support school feeding programmes in developing countries.

The scheme wants to foster healthy eating habits in schools, emphasise the connection between this and better learning and raise awareness of the good work of school feeding programmes and of the hunger and poverty issues they try to help as well as share the success stories of school meal programmes around the globe.

The scheme suggests that celebrating culture through food is an integral way of promoting healthy eating and learning,

“Food, like language, is an integral part of culture and many countries history and society rests on their food traditions. Families and communities often help children to make valuable connections between a culture and its food.”

Also, collaboration and sharing practice with other schools, not only for this annual event but throughout the rest of the year could prove helpful, if not invaluable, in tackling obesity and promoting optimum, healthy child development.

Ensuring the next generation of children possess all the knowledge needed to fully understand healthy eating and how they can be responsible for their future health, and the health of their own children, is integral in preparing them for later life. Cooking and eating is something that we do every day and it is too easy to become complacent and favour something quick and easy over something healthier and perhaps more challenging in the kitchen. I’m sure I speak for a lot of people when I say I wish I was taught more at a younger age about food, so that I might look forward to preparing myself an exciting meal, rather than it being a chore.

If we can make sure that children form positive life-long relationships with food, rather than ones detrimental to their health, then perhaps there is hope for a healthier and more flavoursome future for all.

So, why not get involved in International School Meals Day this year with a day full of making healthy food fun?

You can share your International School Meals Day ideas or events in the comments below and join the global #BigSchoolLunch twitter campaign by sharing your favourite dish or traditional school meals.

Click here for more information on The School Food Plan on TheSchoolBus.

Sources:

International School Meals Day

Children’s Food Trust

The Daily Mail 

Lego to take over the world of Maths?

Primary schools have been known to use Lego in the classroom for years and yet, coinciding with the introduction of a ‘tougher’ national curriculum for Maths, the household brand name has just claimed its first official customer of their Lego Education product ‘MoreToMaths’.

The product specifically developed to help teach maths to key stage 1 (which includes ready-made lesson plans, software, teaching guides and of course a collection of those infamous building bricks) may sound like a dream come true for both student and teacher. However, after my initial excitement came some creeping cynicism sparking the questions: do toys really have an appropriate place in the maths classroom? Can an informal, playtime-style teaching approach benefit pupils or will it only encourage distraction?

I can still remember the overwhelming, childish, giddiness I used to feel when my Primary School teachers would place an intriguing object in the centre of our tables; the subject for the lesson. Be it some poster paints, animal figurines or even just a tub of salt. I remember thinking these lessons were the most interesting at school, but now I wonder, from an  adult perspective, if this approach is subject sensitive. For instance, we can learn a lot as a child about science in the physical world by actually engaging with it – holding a weight in our hands or dissolving salt into water – but how productive can kinetic learning be with subjects predominantly tackled on paper or screen in the real world, for instance, using maths for calculations in an accounting job.

At hearing the price of one ‘MoreToMaths’ kit for a class of 30, £750, I do wonder whether Lego are genuinely producing this product for the good of today’s young minds, or whether they are actually just gunning for world domination. They aren’t satisfied with being a hazardous obstacle course for all parents at home; they now want to invade classrooms as well. Pupils have been learning maths without it for years, so does it really add any value or is it just a commercial fad? In The Guardian, some teachers have voiced their concerns that the time spent building with the blocks, and tidying them up, could take away from valuable time which could be spent learning.

However, there are benefits to making learning fun. Physically engaging with a topic is a great way for some people to learn; it gets children away from the ever encroaching computer screens and the familiarity of textbooks. It mixes up the classroom dynamic so that not every day is the same, and it’s great to see children really enjoying subjects at school.

Experiential learning can offer children the chance to link their learning with things they do at home by interacting with the world around them. This type of teaching which brings familiar items into the classroom is often incredibly beneficial and encourages a peer-to-peer approach, engaging pupils and allowing them to share ideas around a common and well-known subject. This approach can also be more accessible for children with special educational needs (SEN) and disabilities who may struggle with pencil and paper. The approach is already used, to some extent, in the early years foundation stage (EYFS), where play and learning go hand-in-hand.

The students at Burchfield school certainly seem to love this new addition to their maths lessons. Also, Lego Education already have existing products in the fields of literacy, science and computing, so they seem to be a trustworthy company in terms of the education sector.

There are two sides to this debate. Will Lego’s strategy build a bright future for the classroom or will it end more like a game of Jenga? Is their new product an innovative essential in teaching the new maths curriculum, or are the exercises something that pupils could do at home with their parents?