CreateCATT has just been part of a totally inspiring conference in the UK that looked at how we need to give our children a Whole Education. Many innovative and committed educators gathered to discuss this just days after a new government had been elected and the education sector is optimistic about how the phoenix can rise from the ashes and give our children the education they deserve.
What does this look like in 21st century and in the technological age, and how do we rebuild and ensure that some of the challenges that face young people are met? The state of our children’s mental and physical wellbeing is perilous and needs action.
We have a new pandemic in child wellbeing post-Covid, with increasing developmental delays and mental health challenges: one in five children in England has a probable mental disorder (NHS England, 2023). It is estimated that 17% of children, which equates to 1.6 million school pupils in England, have been identified with Special Educational Needs (SEN) (Government Educational Statistics, 2023) and the UK children post-Covid have been identified as some of the worst affected in the Global North (Holt & Murray, 2022).
These challenges have been exacerbated by underinvestment and societal shifts over the past 15 years. These include cuts in government funding of SureStart (Institute of Fiscal Studies, 2021), an initiative that was shown to provide a good foundation in children’s wellbeing and reduction in hospitalisations; unmet need for specialist support in schools - around 70% of children do not get vital therapy support (Royal College of Occupational Therapists); and the education sector’s workforce shortages and retention crisis (NASUWT – The Teachers’ Union).
We are looking at a rise in the use of technology with both good and bad aspects emerging for children’s education and wellbeing; and increasing urbanisation with pollution being shown to impact on children’s working memory. Children spend less time in nature and this is changing the way they develop as Richard Louv flagged up in 2005 in his book “Last Child in the Woods, saving our children from Nature Deficit Disorder”. They have become increasingly disconnected from nature.
We also see that children play less (State of Play UK, University of Cambridge) and this has detrimental effects on wellbeing as Peter Gray illustrates so beautifully in his YouTube talk “The Decline of Play”. The UN General Assembly has recently launched an International Day of Play to highlight this issue, and research increasingly shows that play is imperative for wellbeing (Why Play Matters, Routledge 2024).
To sum up, there is a need to address four key elements, particularly in early years education:
Nature Deficit
Nurture Deficit
Play Deficit
Sensory Body Deficit.
We need more nature in schools. Human brains evolved as part of the natural world and increasingly there is evidence about how it is good for us. Being in green spaces releases serotonin and makes us happier, it helps us focus and feel calm and the more connected we are with nature the more we will become part of the solution to build a sustainable future. Professor Kathy Willis’s upcoming book on ‘Good Nature’ will be able to guide us how to design healthy, nature-based curriculum, and much of the innovative work emerging from Nature Connections work at the University of Derby and The Eden Project can support this.
We need to build more relationship-focused curricula and build schools where nurture, care and compassion thrive. Safeguarding is important but the focus is a bit problem based rather than solution focused. We need to create safe spaces where children feel seen and valued and are nurtured into caring adults, particularly when this may not be happening at home. We should reassess our behavioural policies and look at what is the need behind the behaviour – most likely children do not feel in control of themselves or do not feel loved and their behaviours are communications that we need to listen to and be equipped to deal with them kindly and compassionately. We need to look beyond behaviour: children are not bad and that should never be an assumption – nor should we endorse that belief by exclusions and expulsions.
Then let’s harness the innate capacity to play and be creative. The PEDAL, ( Play, Education, Development and Learning ) centre at the University of Cambridge focuses on the research around this and the CreateCATT team have specialised over the years in this area, often supporting children struggling at school to become better learners, better friends and happier children. Introducing more project-based learning and creating spaces for exploration and ‘process’ learning to emerge will enrichen any new curriculum. It means letting go of always knowing and being able to assess end products, but then amazing things happen and children can be directors to some extent of their own learning and will show potentials beyond our imagination.
Finally we need to create far more opportunities in schools for sensory body experiences. In this technological age, none of us move enough. We develop highly alert and sometimes over-stimulated visual and auditory systems and very active thumbs and forefingers with rather distorted tactile systems that become apparent in handwriting difficulties and lots of chewing and eating sensitivities. Too many children do not get enough vestibular and proprioceptive input in their school day so do not develop a good body schema and this impacts on focus, attention, self-esteem and self-regulation. We need to engage our whole bodies in learning and curriculums need to offer multisensory learning opportunities – not just in PE – but across all subjects so that children can move, sense and feel as they learn. This will create more inclusive classrooms as well as improve the wellbeing of all children.
CreateCATT believes we should have Occupational Therapists and other specialists in all schools to support children’s holistic learning; that is unlikely so we hope that some of the above suggestions may help us think differently about what a whole education might look like to meet our children’s needs.
For more information on the Whole Education movement visit: https://wholeeducation.org/
For more information on the work of CreateCATT visit:
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