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Important update from TheSchoolRun

For the past 13 years, TheSchoolRun has been run by a small team of mums working from home, dedicated to providing quality educational resources to primary school parents. Unfortunately, rising supplier costs and falling revenue have made it impossible for us to continue operating, and we’ve had to make the difficult decision to close. The good news: We’ve arranged for another educational provider to take over many of our resources. These will be hosted on a new portal, where the content will be updated and expanded to support your child’s learning.

What this means for subscribers:

  • Your subscription is still active, and for now, you can keep using the website as normal — just log in with your usual details to access all our articles and resources*.
  • In a few months, all resources will move to the new portal. You’ll continue to have access there until your subscription ends. We’ll send you full details nearer the time.
  • As a thank you for your support, we’ll also be sending you 16 primary school eBooks (worth £108.84) to download and keep.

A few changes to be aware of:

  • The Learning Journey weekly email has ended, but your child’s plan will still be updated on your dashboard each Monday. Just log in to see the recommended worksheets.
  • The 11+ weekly emails have now ended. We sent you all the remaining emails in the series at the end of March — please check your inbox (and spam folder) if you haven’t seen them. You can also follow the full programme here: 11+ Learning Journey.

If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected]. Thank you for being part of our journey it’s been a privilege to support your family’s learning.

*If you need to reset your password, it will still work as usual. Please check your spam folder if the reset email doesn’t appear in your inbox.

How to help your child to love learning

Happy children
Want to support your child’s education but at a loss as to where to start? Emily Organ spoke to educational psychologist Jeni Hooper to pick up some practical, easy-action tips.

1. Build happiness and confidence

“Happy people learn better. You can help your child feel happy by giving them optimism – the belief they can do things. The ability to learn is like a muscle, it develops from practice. Ability is not a fixed thing; half of what we do is innate ability and the other half comprises of soft skills such as energy, persistence, attention, motivation and personal application.

“Parents can help children develop these skills at home by playing family games that teach children about turn taking, engaging children in conversations, and by going to places and doing activities that get children into the habit of focusing. Having a say in what they do also helps children because they feel they can contribute."

2. Allow time for play

“Young children should have adequate time for free play. This gives them the opportunity to understand effort, creativity, and challenge and to learn things for themselves. The problem with organised activities is that children can end up with no time under their control. Children don’t need wall-to-wall entertainment – they need to develop the capacity to manage on their own, which can be a useful skill in a busy classroom."

3. Find your child’s strengths

“Parents need to be aware of what their child’s strengths and interests are. We all work best when we work to our strengths. You can tell your child is enjoying something because you see their eyes light up and they demonstrate enthusiasm and spontaneity."

4. Praise your child constructively

“Focus on praising effort rather than outcome. It makes more sense for your child to compete against themselves rather than others. So this means you’re looking at how they’re progressing at learning something rather than comparing their progress to other children’s.

“When you praise your child, give specific information about what was good about what they did. This can help build their enthusiasm. We can give what we think is positive praise but is actually quite general and low key – that can be disappointing for a child to hear. Add in the odd comment, such as, ‘what were you pleased about with that?’ Encourage your child to talk about what they've done and you’ll see greater satisfaction."

5. Manage challenges well

“When something isn’t going well, have a 'problem solving' conversation with your child where you explore what might help. Give your child a chance to make a contribution and come up with options. If they can make a contribution, they can feel they own it.”