Headteacher blog 19th January 2018

If you practise something and focus on it, you get better; if you don’t, you don’t. This is very clear at school: we have been getting better and better results in cross country running for example, but this week our netball team really struggled against other schools. We don’t have a regular netball team or club (at this time of year) and it is rarely in the PE curriculum so these results were uncomfortable but not really surprising. As a big, sporty school we aren’t really used to results like that but it was good to see another Pudsey school whom we have often beaten in sports events doing exceptionally well in netball. It is probably healthy to recognise that individually and collectively, we can’t be brilliant at everything. (We will try to get a bit better at netball though…).

This week I published a termly Curriculum Newsletter and this focussed in its centre-spread on health and fitness. We included some data from our school about children’s weight but I had to ask for this directly and our local Public Health team had to, in turn, request it from London. Schools get inundated with data all the time about the minutiae of attainment and academic progress filtered by a huge number of variables, but simple, core data about the health and fitness of our children, and their likely long term health futures, is not regarded as a priority to track and act upon. Projections for future obesity nationally are quite shocking and we need to be doing more to promote and facilitate healthy lifestyles.  I imagine that I would get a strong reaction if I directly raise the issue of a child’s weight with parents – I have only done so once as head teacher – but is avoiding the subject in the child’s best interests?