Tag Archives: schools

Supporting a balanced approach to risk in schools: what I am doing, and how you can help

4-year-old boy on a rope swingI am pleased to announce that this Autumn, I will be putting on some training on risk, targeted at schools. The workshops, organised by the Council for Learning Outside the Classroom (CLOtC), will look at why outdoor learning and play matter, what a balanced, thoughtful approach to risk looks like, and how this can be developed in schools. The half-day sessions will be repeated in four venues across England in Sept, Oct and Nov. See the end of this post for dates and venues, and head to this CLOtC web page for bookings.

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“Sort it out for yourself” – sound advice, or too much to ask?

Bold Park studentsHow do schools and other settings help children to deal with arguments and disputes? And are some well-meaning approaches doing more harm than good?  A young Australian who I met on my recent visit there had some interesting answers to these questions.

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When anxious parents are the problem, what is the solution?

baby-girl-knee-padsHow should schools, nurseries, kindergartens and other education, childcare and play services respond to anxious parents? I was asked this question recently by an Australian early years educator who heard me speak a couple of months ago.

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Child reads own school report that says she cannot read

Poster with words "you cannot read this sentence"Last Friday I spoke with a parent from a local primary school about her 6-year-old daughter’s school report. The report stated that her daughter “has not met the expected standard for the Year 1 phonics screening check.” The parent told me how puzzled they both were by this, because her daughter could confidently read lots of written material by herself – including this very statement from her report.

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The school where kids can build dens

Last week I visited a school where the students can build dens freely, any time they want, during breaks between lessons. In case you were wondering, Berwick Fields Primary School in City of Casey, Victoria, Australia is not a Steiner School, or a progressive private institution. It is a state school (and a large one, with over 1,000 students on roll).

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It’s time to take a thoughtful approach to bullying

bully movie logoIn a post on her ‘Free Range Kids’ blog last week, Lenore Skenazy questions whether the US is in the midst of a ‘bullying crisis’. She quotes statistics from a piece in the Wall Street Journal that showed dramatic declines in both the fear of attack (down from 12% in 1995 to 4% in 2009) and actual victimisation (where rates have fallen fivefold). Continue reading