Improve Pupil Attainment by Improving Pupil Health

Today we were invited to attend Yorkshire Sport Foundation's conference on improving pupil attainment by improving pupil health...sounds sense.

Activity experts from UK Universities Leeds Beckett and Loughborough were some of the keynote speakers.

2 points which made real impact were...

1: For any learning environment to be effective the brain needs to be stimulated but when we sit down the blood supply slows down impeding cognitive performance. Increase the blood supply by moving (the heart rate increases) and so does the brains performance. ..concentration,focus and behaviour levels increase and improve.

Studies tell us that the average student will lose classroom attention after around 20 minutes. Most lessons last around 45 minutes!

2: Studies show us that children are inactive in 2 key areas - at home in the evening and in the classroom. On average we make kids sit down for 4.5 hours every school day. It therefore makes total sense to look to include ways we can make the classroom sensibly active - standing desks are one of the workable solutions.

Today's kids are the least active in history - www.designedtomove.org

It was a great day and we'll be blogging more about the problems, solutions and impact over the coming days.