It’s time to get radical. It’s time to accept that what we are doing isn’t working and that we are presiding over a sponsored sleepwalk towards the slow, painful death of an entire generation.

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
Nothing is going to get better. It's not.” Dr Seuss.

This is a warning. You might not agree with me on many things in this article. It is not written to appease or impress. It is written to address what I feel is the biggest problem facing our society and to look at what we need to do the reverse the slide.

The health of the UK’s children is a national disgrace and it is time to get serious in our efforts to find a solution. Successive governments have tried and failed to address a slide that has seen us arrive at a quite appalling position: More than one in three children (34.2 per cent) in year 6 were either overweight or obese in 2016-17. Almost one in four children (22.6 per cent) were overweight or obese in reception year. (Figures taken from The National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP).

If these figures do not scare you then you are part of the problem in not taking this seriously enough. It’s a fault of a 1st world society that claims it places emotional wellbeing above health, without accepting that good health drives good emotional wellbeing.

As an example of the problem obesity was the focus of a recent Cancer Research awareness campaign – citing it as the second biggest cause of cancer behind smoking. Instead of being appalled and accepting the seriousness of the issue highlighted by the campaign (keep in mind that figure of 1 in 4 children in Reception year), the media coverage centered on the ethical credence of ‘fat shaming’ and carried out a witch-hunt from which Cancer Research had to defend both itself and its motivations. It was quite astonishing to hear representatives making statements saying they were sorry if anyone had been offended.

Smoking Kills. We know it does and people shouldn’t smoke. No one argues with that anymore. Cancer research were telling us that allowing children to be obese is a close runner up to putting a cigarette in their mouth. You may think that’s harsh, but it’s true.

It’s a very sad reflection of where we are in this conversation that having overweight and obese children is deemed acceptable in today’s society; it’s not. It’s a blueprint for an unhealthy, unhappy population, living out a shortened life in constant pain and costing the tax payer as a burden on the NHS. I think that’s what Cancer Research were trying to say. I think it’s what they should be saying.

It’s important to look at why we find ourselves in this position. I attended a seminar recently and heard a really interesting Keynote talk from Professor William Bird from an organisation called Intelligent Health. Among other things he explained the reduction of the ‘autonomous play radius.’ The central idea is that children really benefit from autonomous play – that is play without direct adult supervision – and that over the generations the radius children have to do this has dramatically shrunk. It’s quite probable that at 9 years old our grandparents could play anywhere within an 8 mile radius of their houses, they often left with their friends in the morning and were back by dark, having explored all their 8 miles had to offer; forests, housing estates; quarries; fields; meadows; parks; rivers etc. When they were 9 our parents may have been allowed to roam their own communities, say within a 2 mile radius – as long as they didn’t cross any major roads and stayed with their friends. When we were 9 years old maybe we could go to the park on our bikes to play and had to be back in by tea time. Ask yourself what is the autonomous play radius of 9 year olds today? What experiences do they have? How much do they move? How much freedom do they have?

At this stage it is important to say that I get it. I am a parent myself (4 boys - the loons in the picture) and the dangers facing my own children are not lost on me. The play radius of my own children at 9 is the garden. It’s undeniable that our changing society has dramatically changed the lives of our children. If they are sitting on the sofa playing on a tablet or watching television, then we know they are safe from physical harm. By trying to protect them we’ve created a life that sees them encouraged to move less and have very few experiences.

Whenever there is a shortage of something in a child’s life the task of topping it up falls to the state. Often that means extra responsibility for schools and teachers. So it is with this lack of physical activity.

There have been millions spent on primary school PE and school sport over the past 6 years; it was meant to create a sustainable, long term impact, but has it changed attitudes of teaching staff and parents around the importance of health? The sad answer is probably not enough.

There has been a huge Change4Life national campaign asking for parents to take responsibility and change the content of packed lunches, increase levels of activity and reduce sugar intake. Has it targeted the right people in a direct enough way to make a significant difference? Probably not. There is, as there should be, a will to address the problem from Government, but the harsh truth is wrapped up in in apologetic phraseology, too scared to offend voters to really force them to change habits.

I heard that many GP’s are now prescribing physical activity as a treatment for patients, but GPs and practice nurses recently told a University of Bristol team there were limits on what they could do to solve what is effectively a social problem – and that they felt uncomfortable discussing this with patients who often retaliated to what they saw as an attack on their lifestyle. Time pressures, a lack of treatment options, and parental reluctance to address weight problems prevented them having any effect, said staff.

Recently the government said no one group could solve obesity on its own.

So what can we as educators, do about it? Actually there is a lot we can do.

Firstly, we can help our communities by making safe spaces available to them, so that our children can get their freedom back. This was a core tenant of the much-missed Extended Schools programme of 2010 which seemingly came to a halt due to the questionable ownership of school buildings with the expensive and ill-judged Building Schools for the Future PFI initiative. Now more than ever, it’s vital that we find a way for schools to open their incredible facilities up on weekends and evenings so that children can come and play for free, bring their bikes and ride them around in safety, with no roads, no strangers and minimum adult involvement. This will do a number of things: it will create social interactions and freedoms and it will develop their learning through play and interactions away from teachers. It may even make the child’s relationship with the school a more positive one.

Secondly, we can address the PE elephant in the room by making 2 hours a week statutory and focusing on enjoyment. Kids reflect the attitude of their role models, so if we see it as important enough so will they. By making it 2 protected hours (with no maths boosters, no going out for extra reading, no losing PE time to play rehearsals) we will show kids how important it is to us and it will become just as important to them. Then, we must remember that experiences of PE MUST be fun for all. Make it fun and you’ll form the habits that will stick forever – make it painful and that’s what they’ll associate with movement.

All kids are born active and I firmly believe there is an activity that fits everyone, so give them a range of experiences, allow them to make choices and set them achievable challenges to motivate them. Part of this is the need to move away from our obsession with teachers teaching PE; instead we need motivated, engaged, enthusiastic role models delivering PE in schools – if that is a class teacher then that’s fantastic – ideal in fact – but if it’s not why not engage people who love being active to create a generation who love being active?

Far more important than the ever rumbling teacher versus coach debate is the question of good practice versus bad practice. If you can enthuse all the pupils in the class so that they look forward to moving and shaking then that’s surely the number 1 priority for us all. After all, the PE and sports premium is 50% funded by the Department of Health, not the department of Can you Create the Next Usain Bolt. It’s far more about engaging the ‘non -sporty’ and keeping our hospital beds empty thirty years from now.

Thirdly we can start to pay attention to the huge bank of academic research that proves the positive effects of physical activity on academic performance, brain activity and emotional wellbeing and then shape our school day accordingly. Let’s all have active assemblies (5 minutes of free dancing at the start of each day). Make sure every day includes at least one physically engaging numeracy and literacy lesson (there are so many resources to make this happen now) and let’s be creative in our timetabling – be brave enough to put numeracy and literacy after exercise not before it so that we know the kids are awake and ready to learn. If you are brave and put PE first lesson of the day, I’d expect you would quickly see an improvement in your attendance and lateness figures too.

There are lots more things we can do to improve the situation – I’m sure that if you put your mind to it you could think of hundreds of changes you could make if you are willing. It’s about being creative and open to new ideas.

Sometimes, and this is one of those times, it needs radical thinking to achieve radical changes. 

I'll leave you with that thought and my favourite go to quotation:

I define insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results"  Albert Einstein

Thanks for reading my latest rant. Get in touch if you want to discuss any element of this, or any of my blogs.