The Big Sports Day

Getting involved couldn’t be easier. Just hold your sports day as usual – the only difference being that youngsters are asked for a suggested £1 donation to take part.  Kids love to see teachers letting their hair down – so perhaps ask them to dig deep to sponsor a teachers’ race!  Macmillan will even send you a cut-out Macmillan Cup to pose with as part of your fabulous event pack.

The Growing Schools Year Planner

Growing Schools is a campaign which aims to give all children the opportunity to connect with the living environment, whether it is an inner city window box or a vast country estate, a school veg plot or a natural woodland.  

The Prince’s Rainforests Project Schools Christmas card competition winner

Ben Keene in Year 4 from The Greville Primary School in Surrey has won the The Prince's Rainforests Project Schools Christmas card competition. Ben's design, along with those of the year group winners and runners up, is available to send as an eCard and will also be the official Christmas card of The Prince's Rainforests Project. Ben's school will receive 200 printed cards of his design.

JAMES PATTERSON LITERACY INITIATIVE

James Patterson will be in the UK in April 2009 to promote an exciting competition run in partnership with the National Literacy Trust (NLT). The ‘James Patterson Extreme Reading Challenge’ is designed to encourage children to read with their dads / male carers.

Free Books For Schools!!

The Times and The Sunday Times popular Books for Schools campaign is back.  It offers every school in the country, primary and secondary, the chance to increase the number of books in its library – absolutely free.

World Book Day introduces flipbooks to celebrate its twelfth year.  Two books in one for £1. 

Melanie C backs Girlguiding UK members helping to tackle girl-on-girl bullying

Melanie C is supporting local Girlguiding UK members as they take part in the Friendship Challenge in aid of the Mental Health Foundation - in a bid to stop girl-on-girl bullying

Take Part in a Spelling Challenge in Aid of Meningitis Charity

The Meningitis Trust added a new fun event to its fundraising calendar - a school spelling bee. This is a great way for children to improve their literacy skills through a fun competition, whilst raising funds for the charity

Think Food and Farming

The successful Year of Food and Farming drew to a close in September, but lives on as Think Food and Farming. This legacy project shares the same aim of encouraging schools to take part in growing and cooking activities and visits to farms to find out how food is grown and produced.

Farmhouse Breakfast Week

The tenth annual Farmhouse Breakfast Week is taking place from 25 - 31 January 2009 and promises to be the nation’s biggest breakfast celebration ever, with hundreds of events expected to take place across the country. 

Professional development language courses for primary teachers

GE054 Beginners French for Primary Teaching, GE055 Beginners German for Primary Teaching are now live! They will shortly be followed by GE056, the third and final course for primary practitioners who need to acquire or brush up seriously rusty language skills in Spanish.

Shoe Aid for Africa Update

The campaign was launched by shoe care experts Kiwi in October with the aim of giving families a chance to change lives across Africa. The Shoe Aid for Africa campaign took place in schools, Sure Start children’s centres as well as Scouts, Brownies and Girl Guide groups across the country.

Recycled art talent PUT TO THE vote

Six recycled artworks, created by schoolchildren, are going head-to-head in an online vote to win the Big Yellow Pages Art Competition 2008 and claim the £1,000 first prize. This year’s finalists include a Dalek, a desert island, a dragon, an octopus, a spacecraft and a Spitfire aeroplane. All imaginatively created by pupils using old Yellow Pages directories their schools collected for recycling.

Stars line up for Amnesty International

This autumn Amnesty International joins forces with leading actors and world-renowned illustrators to bring to life the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) for a new generation of young children. A new book, a short film and an exhibition form part of a series of celebrations to mark the 60th anniversary of the UDHR, which set out for the first time the human rights and fundamental freedoms to which everyone is entitled without discrimination

Letter Roads Offer

Letter Roads TM,  is the original idea of a 3 year old boy back in 2003, who was struggling to grasp what all those funny shapes meant, the ones his mum insisted on drawing and calling the alphabet.  When he turned his mum’s drawings into roads, a fantastic way of learning the alphabet was born.

Junior Film Critics First Reviews

This week more than 405,000 of you will have been to the cinema with your school as part of National Schools Film Week! The week is organised by the UK charity Film Education and is the only festival of its kind in the world. Last Friday, as part of the launch celebrations for NSFW, the Young Film Critic of the Year Awards were hosted at BAFTA in London. 

The Prince of wales' Rainforest schools Website

Monkey's World comes to the O2

Bees Prove a Hit in the Classroom

You may have seen reports that reports of a dramatic decline in the population of honeybees, due to disease and poor weather conditions, and that English honey is set to run dry by Christmas. As well as denying us a favourite spread, this is a serious problem for agriculture where bees are relied upon to pollinate many of the UK’s food crops.

Grants to help schools participate in National Science and Engineering Week

The BA (British Association for the Advancement of Science) have announced that the grant scheme available to help enable schools organise their own National Science and Engineering Week events is now even larger, enabling more schools to benefit.

Pupils rewarded for potato growing success

The national winners of Potato Council’s Grow Your Own Potatoes Project have been receiving their rewards this week from both the Potato Council and The Sun newspaper.  Pupils at Sutton Infant School, Norwich and Pollyplatt Community Primary School, Scampton both received a laptop and digital camera for their success while St Paulinus Primary School, Crayford also received a digital camera.  All three schools beat off stiff competition from thousands of schools across the UK to harvest the heaviest weights of Vales Emerald and Rocket seed potatoes.

Commemorate 20 years of Chembakolli

Chembakolli, a village in southern India, was founded following an unprecedented march in December 1988 by 10,000 Adivasi (indigenous people). Coming together to reclaim their tribal rights to live in the forests near the town of Gudalur, the march was a huge success, winning the respect of the government and local people. The Adivasi were able to settle in many hamlets on the land, including Chembakolli, as well as establish their own school and hospital.

Headteacher Needed at Bolnore School

The team behind the first parent-promoted primary school in the country is looking for an inspirational headteacher to help build their new school – literally from the ground up. In June 2008, the Bolnore School Group (BSG) from Haywards Heath, West Sussex was the first parent/community group in the country to win a competition to establish a new school.

ActionAid launches ‘Sukulu Malawi!’

As the issue of climate change continues to dominate headlines, charity ActionAid is launching a unique, educational fundraising project that will not only bring the issue alive in UK classrooms, but make a permanent difference to a local community in Malawi.

Get the new school year off to a healthy start!

If you’re a teacher or youth leader who doesn’t know your twister from your slalom or your jumping jax from your double Dutch, then the British Heart Foundation’s (BHF) new Skipping Skills DVD is for you.  

Rockford’s Rock Opera

Rockford’s Rock Opera is a unique free audio book – an ecological musical story with songs, clear narration, animated videos and FREE teaching resources. What’s more, it’s now being used by over 4,000 primary schools around the world and is gathering thousands of evangelical fans.

We Are What We Do

We Are What We Do is a new movement inspiring people to use their everyday actions to change the world. As part of our latest initiative, Young Speakers, we have trained local 6th form students to come into primary schools and give presentations around the power of small, simple actions to bring about massive social and environmental change

St Edmund's Canterbury is a Shining Example

The way in which St Edmund’s School Canterbury assesses its youngest pupils has been highlighted as an example to other schools and rated ‘outstanding’. A Local Education Authority assessor visited the Wrens, the school’s Reception class, which takes children aged four and five years old, and said that the teachers’ tracking and knowledge of each child’s abilities was exemplary.

Gredi Box

The Ingredients Box for Schools, affectionately nicknamed the ‘Gredi Box’, has been designed to help school children safely take the correct amounts of ingredients they need into cookery lessons, including eggs and fluids such as milk.

If you have any photos that you would like to present in a different way, then why not think about getting them printed directly onto acrylic freestanding blocks or wall-hanging panels?  These could look great for displaying in your schools, either on the wall or for presentations or open days.  More>> http://www.fotocube.co.uk/(website presently being updated but you can still email

info@fotocube.co.uk)

Kick for Children with Cancer

Kick for Children with Cancer’ is a nationwide initiative run by CLIC Sargent which encourages schools and youth football clubs across the country to organise their own fun football fundraising events in support of children with cancer.

The KidsOutdoors Campaign

The KidOutdoors campaign, being led by The Scout Association, aims to inspire a million new outdoor adventures. We want more young people to embrace outdoor activities and find that doing things outdoors is a more attractive alternative to TV and computer games

Celebrating Sight in Schools

What would life be like if you couldn’t watch High School Musical or see where the goal was when playing football? The world would be a very different place if you couldn’t see. There are currently 1.4 million children worldwide who are blind, a large number of whom live in developing countries. However lots of the children who are blind could be treated and have their sight restored.

Paddington’s Suitcase Challenge!

TV’s Zoe Ball has been filling her suitcase to help raise funds for Paddington Bear’s favourite charity, Action Medical Research.  As the world-famous bear celebrates the 50th anniversary of the publication of the very first Paddington book this year, Zoe went back to her children’s TV roots to make a miniature version of his iconic suitcase ahead of the charity’s Bring Your Bear fundraising event this June.

'ICE' (In Case of Emergency) Campaign

We all carry our mobile phones with names & numbers stored in its memory. If we were to be involved in an accident or were taken ill, the people attending us would have our mobile phone but wouldn't know who to call. Yes, there are hundreds of numbers stored but which one is the contact person in case of an emergency?

Denise Lewis, who won the gold medal at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, has taken up a position as Early Years Ambassador for the Youth Sports Trust and is also helping to raise awareness of Zoneparc, a primary school playground development programme that is proven to increase children's activity levels and their enjoyment of the playground, as well as improving playground behaviour.

World leaders have promised that all children will have a primary education by 2015, but with only 7 years to go there are still 72 million children who miss out on education completely - send My Friend to School 08 is asking politicians and decision makers to speed up their efforts to ensure that all children get the chance to go to school.

Speaking Another Language

Well isn’t it great being able to speak another language! For more years than I care to remember– be it French, Spanish, German or Italian – the look of the young child who ventures forward and proudly professes,“Guess what? I can speak another language!” has always stopped me dead in my tracks.

Celebrate 50 years of Paddington Bear and help sick babies

National charity Action Medical Research is planning its biggest ever Bring Your Bear fundraising event this June and is inviting primary schools across the UK to join in and celebrate charity mascot Paddington Bear’s 50th anniversary.

Making a difference with Food in Schools

Food in Schools is part of the national Food in Schools programme funded by the Department for Children, Schools & Families and supported by the Department of Health. It is managed on their behalf by the Design & Technology Association and British Nutrition Foundation and provides an exciting opportunity for primary teachers to receive free training with a particular emphasis on developing their practical food skills.

Hop, skip or jump to success in the Kick Asthma mini-marathon

Record Breaker and Asthma UK Ambassador Paula Radcliffe is launching a challenge to schools and groups across the country to each collectively cover 26.2 miles by any means – swimming, hopping, skipping – to raise vital funds to improve the health and well-being of more than a million children with asthma in the UK.

Educators urged to call Zak the Zebra

Educators who call the hotline, run by road safety charity Brake, will receive a free Zak pack which contains lots of resources and advice to help kick-start a local road safety campaign. Zak the Zebra, mascot of Brake’s national child safety campaign, Watch out there’s a kid about!, may also be able to visit communities to support local campaigns.

Is Your School ‘Up For Reading’?

Children with Down syndrome sometimes need additional help to learn. Reading is often something that young people with Down syndrome can be good at.

Children's Poetry

What has made these poems especially useful to children and also to ESL students, is the fact that Josie has added her own clear English voice recording to each of the poems, as children pointed out how useful this was as a tool to help them with reading

Abolishing VAT on School Wear

Following the results of the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) report into the cost of school uniforms, Britain’s best known schoolwear brand, Trutex, is launching a petition which challenges The Chancellor, Alistair Darling, to abolish VAT on all items of school uniform that carry a school badge, regardless of size

Hands on Science

‘Hands on Science’ features fun activities to encourage ‘learning by doing’ amid Science buffs.Primary pupils nation-wide are being encouraged to discover just how relevant and exciting Science is by conducting their very own experiments with everyday bits and bobs found in their classroom and in their homes.

TRAPATTONI SUPPORTS NDC PILOT SCHOOL MILK PROGRAMME

The National Dairy Council has just completed the roll-out of a pilot programme to test a new approach to promoting the School Milk Scheme.  The pilot programmes have now been launched in Counties Dublin, Monaghan, Donegal, Sligo and last night in County Limerick, where Giovanni Trapattoni, lent his support to the concept

2006 Irish Health Behaviour in School-aged Children

This report presents findings on the self-reported health status and health behaviours of specific groups of children living in Ireland. These groups include students from the Travelling community, students from immigrant families, students with a disability and chronic illness and students that are part of the Department of Education and Science¹s School Support Programme, under the Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools action plan, referred to as DEIS schools.

117 inspection reports published

A total of 117 school inspection reports were published today (30 September, 2008) on the Department of Education and Science website alongside the responses received from the schools inspected.  New inspection reports on the web today

Cork’s Solar System Trail to launch on October 5th

In October 2008 Blackrock Castle Observatory in conjunction with ArtTrail and the Cork Astronomy Club will mark Ireland’s first Solar System Trail with a series of framed banners from Patrick’s Bridge to Blackrock Castle Observatory.

Minister O’Keeffe announces 25 major new school building project

The Minister for Education and Science, Batt O’Keeffe TD, today announced details of 5 major school building projects in this region which are to proceed to tender and construction.