Acronyms are commonplace in schools (think PSHE, DT or STEM), but the shorthand way of referring to this entire curriculum as ‘RSE’ may be causing anxiety in many parents, and perhaps nervousness in some teachers too, because it implies that if all schools must teacher RSE, then primary children as young as 5 will be taught sex education. Such a prospect may yield attention-grabbing headlines and ignite some lively debates on social media, but the truth is quite different. 

Trying to predict what the next decade will look like for schools and universities is fraught with difficulty. History is littered with predictions and future projections. Many of these are given with supreme confidence, before they fade conveniently into insignificance as they whiz wide off the mark. According to various experts, scientists and futurologists, we would have landed on Pluto and robots should be doing our laundry by now. Oh, and we’d all be living to 150.

The summer is a time for fun and relaxation but research has shown that many children’s academic abilities drop over the break, therefore undermining all the hard work they, and their teachers, have done over the year.

“While it can seem a little daunting at first, it’s very important for parents to actively encourage their children to keep learning to avoid the negative impact it can have on their return to school in September.

If we want our children to have opportunities where “you don’t even feel like you’re actually learning, you just feel like you are on an adventure” and teachers to “be those people we are, not robots that it felt like we should be”, we need to change the way we think about school lessons. Teaching doesn’t need to follow a rigid classroom format – a simple change like going outside can have tremendous benefits.

Only 2% of pupils in England cycle to school, even less than the 3% of adults who cycle to work. Similarly low rates can be found in other wealthy countries, like the US and Australia, although some European countries have much higher levels. The analysis shows that if children in England cycled to school at the same rates as Dutch children do (for trips of the same distance and hilliness), more than two in five children would do so.

Pastoral Care means being understanding, honest, allowing yourself to empower others through acts of kindness and boosting self esteem in students when they do and don’t need it.

I am a firm believer in kindness, because it’s free and so easy to use, anyone can be kind, we just need to encourage other people to be so.

If as educators we want to have an impact on the future, then we need to have an idea of what we want that future to be, one of the key motivations for me writing Education: A Manifesto for Change was to share my own, personal aspiration for what I hope it can be; I wanted to look above the relentless pressure that we face as educators; economic and political, to look up and breathe an air not focused on efficiency but on something more optimistic.

A third of children in the UK are overweight or obese by the time they reach primary school. Many other countries are facing the same issue, with a tenfold increase in the worldwide prevalence of childhood obesity over the past four decades. Governments worldwide are attempting to tackle the growing problem of obesity by increasing the amount of physical activity young people are doing on a daily basis. But while this all sounds well and good, robust evidence for the effectiveness of existing school-based physical activity programmes is lacking. It is also unclear whether all children – irrespective of socioeconomic status – benefit equally.

What’s on the ‘banned from schools’ list for 2019? Some schools in the UK have banned using toilet paper tubes for craft projects in fear of spreading germs and bacteria. So you won’t see any toilet paper rolls in the classrooms. What next? A ban on sticky back plastic? A UK school has banned TEACHERS from using red pens when they grade students’ work. Apparently, red-inked tests look more upsetting for some individuals. Is this just a way to reduce the marking workload?

First of all, we need a fundamental change in schools. One that puts teacher wellbeing as high as student wellbeing. One that means school leadership teams implement things based on evidence and research rather than on the whim of what “Ofsted wants to see”. The one thing we certainly do not need though are compulsory wellbeing sessions. Teachers much prefer that time to work on the tasks at hand.