The answer to this question was provided last school year by the government.  And it is rather curious, because I suspect that until most of us saw the evidence we wouldn’t have guessed.

It appears from a whole raft of medical evidence that 30 minutes a day of additional physical activity not only cuts down the chances of obesity but also results in dramatic improvements in behaviour and academic achievement.

As a bonus the children who engage in this will also have a lower chance of suffering from mental health issues during the rest of their school lives.

It is the sheer breadth of the benefits that pupils accrue through such activities that has prompted imoves to develop a series of over 1000 curriculum-based active lessons and activities which meet the requirements of this new initiative.

All of these can be undertaken within normal lessons within the regular classroom or, if you prefer, in a hall or outdoors.

So convinced are we of the benefits of the programme that we have decided to offer you a chance to use the programme free of charge.  In short you and your colleagues can take any five lessons without any cost or commitment by the school.

What’s more, these lessons are each complete in themselves, with interactive movies, supporting lesson plans, flashcards, music, and assessments, making the whole process easy to plan, teach, and evaluate.

In effect it means that the complete requirement of 30 minutes a day additional physical activity can now be met by the school using these resources, integrating them easily into the normal teaching timetable.

And the improvement in grades and achievement comes as a bonus.

You can read more about imoves’ active lessons and choose the lessons that you wish to try out, from literacy to science, from PSHE to PE, on our website.

You can, of course, sign up to the free use of the resources straightaway, but if you have any questions please do email enquiries@imoves.com or phone us on 0114 2661061.

Ian Pickles

Imoves

Have you considered accredited mentoring?

How to effectively engage young males with education and provide them with the support and encouragement they need to go on to bigger and better things is always a concern for staff.

Mentoring, as well as offering an evidence-based approach to work with young men, helps young men to achieve their academic and vocational potential, addresses concerns related to problematic behaviours – and provides go-to support and signposting to other services from someone they have built trust with.

The Unit Award in Mentoring Boys and Young Men is a Level 2 award providing your staff/students with an understanding of mentoring work. Whether it is for your staff to better engage with boys or for the boys themselves to support one another, mentoring is an approach that has been shown to work.

The workshop covering the award criteria is 4 hours long. Each staff/student undertaking the award will be provided with their own copy of the Mengage course book: Mentoring Male: A guide to mentoring work with boys and young men. A Level 2 certificate will be issued upon completion.

The workshop costs £1295 for up to 10 staff or up to 15 students or a one-off date on Thursday 12th October CLICK HERE.

For more information or to discuss a booking, you can contact Liam by email at liam@mengage.co.uk or by phone on 07788725318.

Alternatively, you can visit our website at www.mengage.co.uk to see what else we offer with regards to mental health and raising boys’ achievement.

“It is a fun way of reinforcing all the great work being done by teachers every day in the classroom.”

– Chris Packham, TV presenter, author and education advocate.

“Now, we all know that keeping learning fun and informative is the key to gaining and keeping pupils’ interest and concentration, which is why I have become a massive fan of the website, Education Quizzes.”

This is what TV presenter, author, and education advocate, Chris Packham, said when he was asked what he thought about Education Quizzes. But that is not all…

“You see, they are written by teachers who understand the sticking points that pupils have when they are trying to understand a complex subject.

“And reassuringly, the online quizzes follow the national curriculum that is taught in school.

“So what makes them so different? Well these quizzes are like the building blocks of learning. They break down subjects into bitesize chunks, and in doing this, they declutter some of these complex topics into easy to understand questions and answers.

“As your pupils progress through the questions, the quiz will provide your pupils with an explanation as to why they got a questions wrong, and just as importantly, why they got a question right.

“Education Quizzes is different in that it wants you to enforce the theory behind the learning. It wants to make sure that pupils really understand the building blocks of that particular subject. And as your pupils’ understanding grows, the quizzes get harder.

“Furthermore, the performance reports will reassure you that your pupils are comfortable in their understanding of that level and ready to progress to the next stage.

“And do you know what I really like about it? Is that it is a fun way of reinforcing all the great work being done by teachers every day in the classroom.”

To sign your school up to Education Quizzes for free for a whole year and to access the 3,800 (and growing) quizzes on the Education Quizzes website, simply visit www.educationquizzes.com/schools-uk-registrations/. And if you have any queries, you can easily contact us by sending an email to admin@educationquizzes.com.

Despite the recent huge growth in interest in learning outside the classroom, schools are limited as to how much Learning Outside the Classroom they can offer, not least because, as 60% of subject leaders reported, booking the school minibus can be somewhat of a challenge.

And in the current economic climate acquiring an additional minibus (even on a lease) is no longer a financially viable option for many schools, which is why some have opted to lease half a minibus – thus increasing their opportunity for LOtC.

Indeed the notion of leasing half a minibus might sound strange but it simply means sharing a minibus with a neighbouring school in the same cluster, trust or council, and thus reducing the costs associated with leasing an additional minibus by 50%.

If you are interested in learning more about leasing half a minibus and how it could work for your school, please do call 01753 859944 and we’ll do our best to point you in the right direction. Alternatively, you can email minibus@benchmarkleasing.co.uk.

And if you would like to have a look at the type of minibuses that we regularly lease to schools before getting in contact, please visit www.minibusleasing.co.uk/school-minibus.php.

There is one time of the year during which everyone expects something new: September.  Students have obviously advanced a year, there may perhaps be some new members of staff, there are newcomers in the school just starting their secondary schooling.

Such a moment can be the perfect time to suggest a change.   Especially if the change involves the introduction of a new process to aid those students whose literacy attainments were particularly below average in the previous year.

Indeed, if these students then make a great leap forwards in literacy, that change will have a dramatic impact on not just the students and their parents but also on the whole school. Word spreads that your school really can and will make a difference in terms of literacy.

The approach that can achieve such a dramatic turnaround from the beginning of the academic year uses one-to-one tuition for selected pupils and students – but without the costs normally associated with these sorts of initiatives.

Of course, these are bold claims and you will want to see this validated.  This is why we offer a free trial of our approach. If you arrange a trial now, we can ensure this happens in the first half of the coming term.

Through our program, every literacy misunderstanding and every concept not fully grasped is instantly spotted, resulting in the student being taken back a step for remedial work. After this, progress and advancement resumes.

Each individual’s literacy needs are thus analysed and each student is directed to an engaging set of activities which remedy any deficits before advancing through to the next set of skills.

Because the level of instruction is so accurately reflective of the child’s current abilities, the student then gets a feeling of success and progress which of itself is highly motivational.

To enable you to see this process in action before making any firm decisions, there is more information about Lexia Strategies® and the extraordinary results that other schools have seen here.

You can also read a variety of case studies here. You will find on the top right of the page the link to gain full access to the program for 30 days without any payment or commitment.

If you want to know more about the program, please do call 0191 482 1939 or email info@lexiauk.co.uk

Rob Kay

LexiaUK Software Consultant.

Like so many government directives, the new “30 minutes a day additional physical activity”, which is prescribed for all pupils from this term onwards, comes with a multitude of benefits but little guidance as to how such a programme may be fitted into the average school day.

Certainly on the benefits side there can be little argument, for report after report has shown that children in engaging in this sort of activity are less likely to become obese. Furthermore they will show an improvement in behaviour and academic achievement and will have a lower chance of suffering from mental health issues.

Indeed it is the sheer breadth of the benefits available to schools and pupils that has prompted imoves to develop a series of over 1000 curriculum-based active lessons and activities which meet the requirements of this new initiative.

So convinced are we of the benefits of the programme that we have decided to offer you a chance to use the programme free of charge.  With this option you and your colleagues can take any five lessons without any cost or commitment by the school.

What’s more, these lessons are each complete in themselves, with interactive movies, supporting lesson plans, flashcards, music and assessments, making the whole process easy to plan, teach, and evaluate.

In effect it means that the complete requirement of 30 minutes a day additional physical activity can now be met by the school using these resources, integrating them easily into the normal teaching timetable.

All the activities can take place in the normal classroom, hall, or outdoors, and, as the government reports clearly say, the results (in terms of improved learning, focus, and behaviour) will be witnessed very quickly indeed.

You can read more about the imoves active lessons and choose any five that you wish to try out, from literacy to science, from PSHE to PE, on our website.

You can, of course, sign up straightaway, but if you have any questions please do email enquiries@imoves.com or phone us on 0114 2661061.

Ian Pickles

Imoves

Of course, when a hoodie, a tee-shirt, or anything else is chosen as part of the official leaving clothing for those now departing the school, the look of the items will be what attracts the students first of all.

But hidden behind this is a second factor, and one that turns out to be much more important.

Because it turns out that some items of leavers’ clothing are made on the basis that they are only going to be worn once or twice.  After that, it is argued, it doesn’t matter if the clothing deteriorates, because the leaver won’t be wearing it any more.

Thus the quality of the clothing can be cut.  But although such an approach does cut costs, it can also seriously damage the school’s reputation.  For it turns out that many leavers keep their leavers’ clothing as a memento.  And if they see it rapidly deteriorating that can affect their view of the school they have just left far more than one might imagine.

As we all know, negative comments spread like wildfire on social media, and therefore what should have been a positive statement about the old school now becomes a totally negative statement about the shoddiness of the clothing provided for the leavers.

Which is why there is one company, LeaversGear, which specialises in quality, not just for leavers but for all school apparel, be it for school trips, outdoor activities, or sports teams.

To take our hoodies as an example, we offer a slightly heavier weight at 310gsm against the cheaper standard 280 gsm, with double fabric hood and self colour chunky flat cords.  They have a kangaroo pouch pocket with concealed ipad and phone pocket, ribbed cuff and hem and twin needle stitching detail.

What’s more, not only is our quality exceptional, we are very competitively priced as well.

And there’s no need to guess at sizes; we will send you samples at no cost.  We just ask you to return the samples when you’ve finished with them.

For more details please see our website www.Leaversgear.com

For early response:-E-mail: enquiries@leaversgear.com

Phone 07801 897272

Leavers Gear
31 Peacock Road
Kings Heath
Birmingham B13 0NZ

The LK 83XP has auto shut off (to preserve battery life), hard plastic keys & a slide-on case for durability plus a THREE year guarantee. It’s an excellent alternative to the brand leader and at a time when school budgets are under pressure its cost is reassuringly modest…from only £ 5.29 each ex vat. Standard and Higher Grade, Junior & Leaving Certificate

Further details of the LK 83XP dual power scientific calc be found at:

or contact Signpost Educational Ltd on 020 7515 1797 or email: info@signposteducational.co.uk

Signpost Educational Ltd., PO Box 999 London E14 6SH

Not surprisingly a recent minibus survey from Benchmark Leasing cited cost as the reason for many schools not acquiring a (additional) minibus. Yet only half of schools have considered leasing a minibus as a way around the problem.

Of course, the great benefit of leasing is that there are no large upfront payments so you don’t have to wait until you have raised enough funds to cover the cost of a minibus in order to acquire a (new) one – which would clearly be the case if you were looking to buy a minibus outright.

Additionally, as leasing is an arrangement which makes it possible for schools to fund the minibus through a small payment each month, there is the added benefit of improved budgeting and cash flow.

In fact, leasing a minibus can sometimes work out to be cheaper in the long run due to the rate at which vehicles devalue over time and/or with use – so it is well worth contacting a company like Benchmark Leasing to get a quote for a brand new minibus so that you can look at the figures for yourself.

Furthermore, by leasing a minibus with Benchmark Leasing, the vehicle’s MOTs, repairs* and services are included in the arrangement with the costs conveniently built into the lease price.

To enquire about leasing a brand new minibus with Benchmark Leasing, please do call on 01753 859944 or email us at minibus@benchmarkleasing.co.uk. You might also like to have a look at our website to get a feel for the type of vehicles that we regularly lease to schools.

* T&Cs apply