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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.

Tackling childhood obesity through PE

Tackling obesity through sport
Gaining a good, well-rounded physical education can benefit your child's health and weight for years to come. We take a look at how physical education can help the fight against childhood obesity.

Physical education's profile has recently been raised in the fight against obesity. Sue Tibballs, chief executive of the Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation (WSFF), believes it plays as important a role as food.

“There has been a lot of focus on diet in the fight against childhood obesity, but that is quite a passive way to deal with it,” she says. “It is also about being physically healthy and looking after your body in a way that will enable you to get the most out of it.”

Encouraging children to enjoy physical education

For some children, PE is the main source of daily physical activity. Although many take full advantage of lessons, schools still face the challenge of engaging young people with a variety of needs and interests.

There needs to be equal encouragement for boys and girls, and for those with physical challenges, but there is a concern that girls' participation in sport drops off from the age of fourteen. According to research by the WSFF nearly a quarter of women say that PE at school put them off sport and 40 percent of girls as young as seven don’t want to be seen to be ‘sporty’.

Sue says girls have the view that ‘thinness is more important than fitness’ and warns of a crisis in women’s fitness levels which is set to get much worse.

“Girls are growing up believing it is more important to be attractive than active,” Sue says. “Sport is still seen as unfeminine, and girls’ earliest experiences of sport are often off-putting.”

What parents can do

“It is amazing how many different types of sports have been introduced by schools because of parents,” says Sue, “Parents can play a valuable role in supporting schools’ sporting efforts.”

“Also, there are important issues around body image and parents need to be aware of that,” she adds. One way to mitigate against negative body image is to be active – it builds self esteem and body awareness, and creates a stronger sense of self.

Sport will improve general health, helping to stave off problems like heart disease and diabetes. So learning about the links between exercise and health at an early age will pay huge dividends later in life.