Joining Forces to Tackle Obesity, 21-22 January 2002

 

Transcript : The Role of Education

 

Speaker

 

Sue Campbell, Joint Advisor on Physical Activity in Schools to the Department for Education and Skills, and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

 

ANDREW HILL: Okay, our final speaker of this session is Sue Campbell. Sue Campbell is Joint Advisor on Physical Education and Sport and she assures me she is one of those rarities, a joined up advisor, since she advises both Departments for Education and Skills and the Departments for Culture, Media and Sport. Sue.

 

SUE CAMPBELL: Thank you very much. At the risk of upsetting you Mr Chairman, I’ve been sitting for an hour and I know you have and you had a jolly good lunch, so in the spirit of the talk I’m about to give would you all like to stand up and have a jolly good stretch. Come on, on your feet please. Nobody sitting down unless you are unable to stand, okay? Now could you do a really good stretch of any direction, I’m not too bothered which way and then a really good bend. Anything you want to bend, bend. If you’ve got problems bending give somebody next to you a hand, will you? And can we stretch one more time, a really good stretch. You know one of those you do in the morning when you get out of bed, okay? Then rub your backside and then if you don’t mind sit down again. That would be great, thanks.

 

[Slide] As you can tell, I didn’t sit very well in school. Can I say a big thank you to the National Audit Office for giving me the opportunity to join you today? And having looked at the delegate list I’m very conscious I’m talking largely to a health based audience. I would have loved to have seen more education and teachers here but I guess they perhaps couldn’t afford the bill. I heard that. But seriously, thank you very much for this opportunity.

 

My focus is going to be very much on physical activity, physical education and sport and I thought it might help if I kind of defined those terms a little. Physical activity, the one hour a day of physical activity that the Department of Health would like to see, includes a whole range of activity from walking to school through to physical education, through to after school sport, through to cycling when you get home with your friends. And that clearly is an ambition to ensure that we get young people active on a daily basis. Physical education is a national curriculum subject and is there very much as a learning environment. And the exciting part about physical education, although many of you may remember it with not a great deal of excitement, but the exciting part about physical education is it is a unique learning environment. It’s an environment in which young people learn by doing in a very physical and practical way. And it is much more than just running about, engaging in physical activity, although that is a very important part of it. It’s clearly a national curriculum subject because its about engaging young people in learning. And certainly from a very personal point of view, had I not had a quality physical education experience, I most certainly would not be standing here in front of you today. Because it was the vehicle through which I learnt a great deal. But I would like to suggest, if you cast your minds back to physical education, I’m not sure if all of you remember it with great joy and I will come back to that in a minute. And then sport clearly is one vehicle through which young people can express their interests. But I would like to expand our minds a little and when I use the word sport I’d like you to think of everything from physical exercise, going down to the gym, physical activity, aerobics. Let your mind span the whole thing. Please don’t get stuck on sport as football, which is where most people go.

 

[Slide] Okay, the trends in education over recent years, which let me say has been taking place for some time. There has been less time devoted to physical education in the curriculum and less time devoted to sport in our schools. Very different in the independent sector, but the independent sector deliver perhaps a very different menu of opportunities and again I might come back to that menu later. The expertise to deliver that programme has been challenged by the way that we’ve begun to train teachers. When I trained to teach physical education, many, many moons ago, I did a four year course. Now we are seeing students who do three years undergraduate study in a range of subjects and learn to teach in one year. And that is challenging, regardless of what you are doing, but my goodness it’s mighty challenging if you are a primary teacher and you have got to go away and teach nine or ten different subject areas. So we are presenting more and more challenges in our ability to deliver physical education and physical activity to joyous people who are excited and love movement. And may I say that many of our primary teachers are wonderful teachers but about 80% of them, themselves did not have a joyous, wonderful experience in physical activity and certainly struggle to deliver it in that way. And that in itself means that young people do not get engaged in activity. I’m not talking about sport here. I’m talking about the joy of moving.

 

Much lower profile of physical education in schools. Our challenge to our teachers is can they teach inclusively? That doesn’t just mean for those young people with special needs, but let me give you a real living example, 11-14 year old girls in our secondary schools, the biggest group of people that walk away from physical activity. They drop out as we watch them, why? Perhaps because we do not engage them sufficiently with the way we deliver our main core physical education, physical activity programmes. How can we change that? How can we challenge teachers to look at non-traditional ways of appealing to young people? And that message, I think, is a message for all of us working anywhere in and around health and health based issues with young people. We must see it through their eyes. We cannot market this stuff to young people. We can consult with them to find a way to present this information so its cool, accessible and excites them. As much as we think we remember being young, I don’t any more by the way, but as much as we think we remember being young, young people change. What is cool, what feels good, what engages them is not what we remember. And their consultation, their involvement, however little, however young, is really a key part to solving some of these issues.

After school activity declined dramatically. Ten years ago, a huge decline in after school activity and those of you who remember after school activity, at school, you’ll probably remember it was about the first team. It wasn’t about having a go at different and varied things. It wasn’t for everybody. It was for those who were good at it and, of course, I was there every night as you can imagine. Playgrounds. Go into our primary schools in our inner city areas and look at their playgrounds. Black, uninteresting, all dipping toward the grate in the middle. Don’t tell me that that generates a freedom to run. Of course it doesn’t, because the only place you end up is in the drain. How can we engage an excitement in physical activity if the very environment we are putting young people in actually deters them from getting engaged? Transport issues, a huge issue. I don’t see that there are any simple solutions to this one. And I know you’ve heard about walking to school and cycling to school but I taught in Moss-side, Manchester and believe me, you did not walk to school unless you were running like the wind to avoid all the people jumping out from those dark spots around you. So how do we really solve some of these issues? Kids will not stay after school, cannot get to breakfast clubs, unless we tackle some of these transport issues.

 

The school should be a centre of real community engagement, not just for young people but for their parents. And I’m not sure, we’re doing terrific work, and Tom’s talked about that, and it’s beginning to be tackled but that’s the vision of the future. How do we re-engender this notion that the school is at the heart of the community, not somewhere that many parents actually remember with both fear and trepidation in some of our most targeted areas in inner city and in rurally deprived areas?

 

[Slide] However, things are changing. Tom talked about healthy schools initiative and it is beginning to have an impact. We are seeing a massive investment from government in facilities. £750 million in new opportunities fund, round three. And let me say that the emphasis, in that facility bill, although it is on school sites, although it is to improve physical education and sport in schools, the three key note speakers at every one of the seminars, come from health, education and sport. The message is, these new facilities are a real opportunity for you, particularly those of you in primary care trusts and people at local level, to engage with the local education authorities, to look at ways of creating facilities which perhaps are new and innovative and different. And really do pull in the external community, who perhaps have not accessed facilities in the past.

 

Again, when I was in Moss-side, Manchester, the local authority built this great leisure centre in the middle of Moss-side. Who used it? The people from Cheedlehume. For those of you who don’t know, Cheedlehume is a rather nice part of Manchester. They would drive 15 miles and park in the car park. The people of Moss-side didn’t go in the leisure centre. Why not? How do we make what we believe to be important, accessible to people who do not see things as we see them? And again it’s a real challenge for all of us. You know, we know where the communities have problems, we know who those communities are, but how do we reach them? And I believe physical activity, sport in its widest sense, is a way of engaging people. It’s one of the strongest magnets we have for young people. What we do with them when we get them there is the big challenge.

We are developing people, many more people and Tom referred to the 1000 school sport co-ordinators, primary link teachers. It’s a new movement of people coming into schools to try to engage, so that the school sport co-ordinators are talking to the healthy schools co-ordinators, to make sure that we are locking these agendas together. And the role of school sport co-ordinator is to provide greater access for many more young people than perhaps we’ve done in the past. So that both during the curriculum and out of the curriculum time, there is an opportunity to try and to develop and to learn, for all young people.

 

And finally, we are trying to tackle the issue around the training of teachers, both in initial and in-service training. But we do have to remember that the drive has been to improve literacy and numeracy in our primary schools and we must all support that. I totally endorse that, but actually it’s been used by many as an excuse to put other subjects very much to the side and I think the education with character in the White Paper is an attempt to say, "Yes, we must raise young people’s literacy and numeracy standards". But, by Jove, we have to engage them in other things as well, if we want them to be social, healthy, happy individuals.

 

[Slide] So why bother? Well, from your point of view, why bother with physical education, sport and physical activity around our schools, is that it can drive emotional, psychological and physical well being. And don’t let us underestimate emotional and psychological well being. I know the focus today shows itself in a very physical way, but we all know that behind that quite often are deep psychological and emotional issues, as well as physical ones. And we know that schools that are investing in high quality, and that’s the important bit, high quality, physical education, sport and physical activity are demonstrating absolutely unequivocally an improvement in academic performance. Completely knocking the myth on the head, if you devote quality time to this area, you detract from others. Absolutely not true. We are seeing massive improvement in behaviour management. We are seeing great raises in self-esteem and self-worth. Young people that develop social responsibility and physical health benefits. We cannot afford not to invest in physical education and sport in our schools. We cannot afford it.

 

I read on the promotional material that it was going to cost this country £3.5 billion to tackle some of these issues. I only want half a billion and I’ll stop half of them happening. And sometimes we have got to grab that opportunity and I believe this is a really key moment. And I’m not suggesting that this that I am talking about, is the panacea. Of course it isn’t. It’s one part of a jigsaw puzzle, but my goodness, it’s an important one, because it is in those schools that we can touch emotionally, socially and psychologically, every young person. That’s where we must engage them. And what do we need to do?

 

[Slide] I’ll build on again what Tom was saying. Early years are key. Yes, we do have Sure Start initiatives. Yes, there are Dads and Lads schemes working within those. But are the people who are in our child-care, running our child-care opportunities, do they know how to develop physical activity effectively? Do they understand words like agility, balance, co-ordination, skill. Those are the things that give you confidence to try things. And those of you who still do not have confidence in physical domain, I bet you can track it back to some horrid experience fairly early on in your life. And I think those early years are absolutely key. And I know the key for you, in the wider health issues, but that emphasis on quality again, and I must keep saying quality, physical development. There is a foundation curriculum and in there, there is a strong physical component. But from our experience what we can see is people are not skilled in delivering that physical component. And again let’s think about it. We know, don’t we, if we capture young people’s minds and engage them early on with ABC’s that they become more literate and numerate. Exactly true of physical development. If we do not capture their hearts and minds early on, if they do not enjoy that feeling of moving, if that feeling of moving makes them feel clumsy and awkward and difficult, believe me we’re into a huge problem. And we have got to make sure those early years are strongly developed.

[Slide] In terms of our school curriculum, absolutely critical that we provide a quality, physical education experience within the curriculum. I would like us to have more time in physical education than we do and the Prime Minister has committed himself to two hours of physical education, high quality physical education and sport, in and out with the curriculum. But I think it’s very, very important time that we use that curriculum and we understand that physical education is much more than just doing. It’s learning through doing. It’s an opportunity to gain a whole range of skills in a different, and sometimes complex, but unique environment. And I think the challenge, and I’m going to come back to this business of menu, I think if I asked you to write down what you had in physical education and sport in school. I’ll guarantee you’d say things to me like, "Ugh, cross-country, ugh hockey, being hit with a stick, I remember it well". You’d tell me. "Netball, ah, my fingers got broken. Rugby, I remember that man blasting me off the pitch. Soccer, I was never any good anyway. Gymnastics, I broke both thumbs going over the box". That’s a true story by the way. Those are the recollections.

 

Now physical education has got a challenge in itself. It has got to try to engage young people, very strongly. And one of the things we’ve done in the research we’ve done around that 11-14 age group, is we asked young people. And of course at that age a young woman has a very strong vision of being woman and athlete seems to sit over here somewhere. And some of the private sector work that has gone on in drawing on these two together, through exercise, through this notion that you can be healthy and well and woman, has been more (inaudible) on women than our physical education has. We face a real challenge in delivering health-related exercise and attractive exercise for our young people, which is also a learning environment. It’s a big challenge for our teachers but I think they are good enough to get there and I’m sure they will.

[Slide] And finally, after school. One of the things we are focusing on is trying to encourage schools to be these hubs of community outreach. People that really can draw parents back into schools. Let me give you one simple example, a very, very simple one, near here. We just converted a playground in a primary school in Stockwell, Brixton and all we’ve done is we’ve levelled the tarmac, so they don’t fall in the drain. We’ve created a quiet zone where you can sit, and as you know with little people, they like to rush about and then stop a bit and then rush about. So a little place where you can go and talk to your friends or sit and do board games or chat and do whatever you want to do. An activity area where you can do all those old-fashioned games that kids don’t play anymore, that I used to love, and they don’t even know how to play them. You know you put hopscotch things down, and they say, "What are these squares for?" You give them a skipping rope and they try hanging somebody with it.

 

So all those things that we used to do quite naturally, they don’t do. So an activity area with a little place so you can go and get some kip and a little games area where those who want to kick the ball, that would have been me, are caged in so you don’t kick the ball at everybody else. And the transformation in that school has been stunning. Not only in the young people’s behaviour, we had 30 cases of bullying a week, we’re now down to two. Not only in truancy, which has virtually disappeared, in an inner city school in Brixton I’m talking about here. But my goodness, parental involvement has been incredible. We have now got people wanting to help with lunch time supervision. We’ve now got people wanting to come and use the playground, adults wanting to get involved. And I think the story that sums it up best for me was a youngster who was running round the playground and then he would stop and puff and then he would go again, and somebody said to me, "What is he doing?" I said, "I haven’t got a clue. We’ll ask him". So when he was having one of his breathless moments, I said to him, "What do you think you are doing?" He said, "I’m feeling the wind in my hair". And I said, "Wow, that’s good. Have you never felt that before?" "No," he said, "I’ve never felt the wind rush through my hair before".

 

Can we imagine what that is like? We talk about physical activity. Can you imagine what that is like? Never to have moved at that age fast enough to feel the wind in your hair. That’s what this is about and we have to engender the environment and the skills of the people to make sure that we do this properly.

 

[Slide] And finally my message to you is this. I have two last messages. One is partnership. I think you said very ably there is no one solution, there is no one agency, it is about us all working together. It is about us developing shared vision. I work now, very closely with colleagues in the Department of Health, Education, Culture, Media and Sport and it has taken us a long time to create a shared understanding of physical activities, physical education, sport. To understand the value of each, the integration of all those, the role that they play in young people’s health. We do need to work at a local level, very much in partnership and I know that’s challenging because it’s time invested in partnership. But my goodness it’s worth it. And please, those of you that are in that health sector, please engage your education colleagues, whether it’s at school level or LEA level.

 

[Slide] And finally, my final message is please let’s involve young people. If we really want to affect young people’s lives, then we have to understand it’s them that own it. They own their lives. We will not change them, they may choose to change. We need to engage them in consultation. We need to know how we will present this stuff to them so it is cool, it is attractive, it is okay and it’s fine to be fit and healthy and it’s not something that is negative.

[Slide] And for a long time, I believe, we’ve pulled in different directions. We really have. We’ve seen so many of these issues, particularly around young people, in a different way. We’ve ended up pulling away from one another and I think it’s these kind of issues that join us together, that make us recognise what really matters in all of this is young people’s health, emotional, psychological and physical health. And I believe if we can tackle this together, it will create for us a much healthier happier society in the future.

 

Thank you very much.

 

ANDREW HILL: Okay, we’ve got time for two or three questions. Can I ask our previous two speakers to join us at the front? As before, if people have got questions, could you raise your hands? When you have been seen, then one of the people with a microphone will come round. I’ll start on the right. The lady there and these two ladies here afterwards. Okay.

 

QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: Hello, Jody Ellman, Practice Nurse and part of the National Obesity Forum. It’s more of a comment than a question, and I think like Sue said, I’m pretty sad to see that there are only three GPs and three nurses here. And I think if we are going to make any changes it really doesn’t matter how many policies we actually make and how many ideas we actually have. I think, unless the people on the ground and the people at the core of the health service, the doctors and nurses actually know what to do, unless we educate them to know what to do, I don’t think we are going to have any change at all.

 

ANDREW HILL: Okay, at the back here.

QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: I am (inaudible) and I am from the Children’s Society which is one of the largest children’s charities. I just wanted to draw your attention to five things that have come up, which we’ve all seen as problems in the environment. Which are the difficulty of people in inner cities from having access to high quality food. The content and the extent of television watching in children. The quality of school meals. The amount of time that parents have for spending with their children and finally the issue of appropriate partnership and funding in the education system. I just want to propose a sort of general question, which is in our quests for partnership working, which in general sounds very good, are we failing to regulate the private sector in terms of negative impact, which they are having on our children?

 

ANDREW HILL: So we should regulate the private sector? If anybody wants to deal with that, you can ask a question in return.

 

DAVID HALL: Can we ask the speaker to clarify what particular aspect of the private sector? Are we talking private health, private education, industry in general? I’m not quite sure which particular area you refer to.

 

QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: Well, the examples would be the panel regulations. Why we allow the supermarkets (inaudible) get to the edge of a (inaudible) centre? There would be the amount and extent of television, of advertising during children’s television, the standard of school meals, which private caterers have to give, the general working time which could be impose on parents. But those are the specific examples.

 

DAVID HALL: What I do think we want to do is to establish, or to help establish more effective partnerships at local level, which fully involve the statutory sector, the voluntary sector and, increasingly, where we have local strategic partnerships and children’s partnerships, elements of the private sector. And if they can coalesce around a local vision for children then better outcomes and life chances for children. And if that can be drawn up in the light of a wider national strategy for children then one may find real change happening. And, I think, to take your question, some aspects of regulation in a global society are unlikely, others in terms of the quality of school meals, as I tried to say, are being tackled.

 

ANDREW HILL: Does anybody else want to take that one? I think the breakout sessions afterwards will actually take quite a lot of these issues and will give people the opportunity, really to add their own views and discuss these a bit further. There is another question at the back. That’s right, the lady with the dark hair.

 

QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: Julie Holt, Food and Health Advisor. My question, really, was to Professor Griffiths. You said that you were disappointed about the evidence about obesity. My question is, bearing in mind some of the other health professionals haven’t been taking obesity as a serious issue about what works, are there any plans in place to have more studies, to get more good quality evidence?

 

SIAN GRIFFITHS: I think that the Public Health Research and Development strategy needs to be used to make sure we do get more evidence for the long term impact of prevention. And I think that the previous comment came that there aren’t many doctors and nurses here today and there is quite big set of issues here about how we raise the profile of obesity as an issue. And then how we engage people in practice-based research. I think because it is a long term issue, because we are looking at the impact of prevention over time, we are going to need to actually have to make sure this is a priority. And it must be a priority in the NHS R&D program, not just for treatment. One of the issues that could be picked up is the whole issue of whether NICE couldn’t produce guidelines for the profession and review whatever evidence is there, raise the issue of lack of evidence, but actually produce guidelines based on it. Because one thing that does engage health professionals is NICE guidelines and it’s also with NICE guidelines, those of you who don’t know it NICE is the National Institute of Clinical Excellence. And one thing that we are always told in clinical practice is that NICE guidelines have to be implemented and funded at a local level. So I just suggest that to you as a way in which we could raise the issue and then I think the National R&D strategy needs to be pushed to actually in backing particularly the public health strand. But it’s not my job to say what is in the R&D strategy. All I can say is that I suggest you keep pushing for it. I think approaches have been made.

 

ANDREW HILL: Okay. We are running…(interruption from the floor) Excuse me, excuse me we are…(interruption from the floor) Excuse me, be quiet please. (interruption from the floor) I am not discriminating. What I am actually going to do, what I am actually going to do is I am going to let people ask a question who haven’t asked one before. Would you sit down please? No, would you sit down please. Sit down please. There are two more questions. There is one at the back there and there is one there. Would you be quiet and sit down please. Will you sit down please? Would you sit down please and let other people people ask questions. You will have the opportunity to talk to these people in two or three minutes’ time when we have a break. Would you sit down please? Sit down please. Yes, you can. Would you sit down please, this is a bigger meeting than just your meeting. This is a bigger meeting than just for you. There was a question at the back. Yes please.

 

QUESTION FROM THE FLOOR: My name is Joe Harvey, Director of the Health Education Trust, and a long time ago a specialist in physical education and I was just wondering two things, really. First of all if you’re serious about, and I thought your presentation was absolutely brilliant, if we’re serious about physical education in schools really having an impact, then the rhetoric at the top of Government must change. Because certainly as one of the few teachers here, or ex-teachers here, there’s a big problem that the perception of success in schools is still SAT’s results and GCSC’s, HSE. Now that has a huge impact on the decision-making and prioritisation in schools, doesn’t it? And that is an issue and the second one is this year is one of an awful lot of conferences that I have been at in the last 18 months around young people and health. And the absence of education is significant in every one. That has got to be addressed if your reality of partnership work at a local level is to be real. Perhaps you would like to comment on those things, and thank you.

 

SUE CAMPBELL: Thank you very much. I obviously endorse your concerns that what is being projected is that somehow time spent on physical education and sport detracts from academic achievement. And I think what has happened to specialist sports college programme, which is one of the four specialisms, there’s more than four now, but which has been one of the four specialisms that the Department of Education and Skills have supported which have been technology, language, arts and sports. This year the sports colleges are the fastest improving academically. And I think that’s really beginning to help us make a much stronger case with government. And certainly the Secretary of State for Education and the Secretary of State for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport met at Downing Street with the Prime Minister. And I think it was the Secretary of State for Education who made the statement that we no longer have to make the case that time spent on physical education and sport is time away from the business of learning. I think your point though is that that message is not out there and it is certainly not out there with school governors and many head teachers and we have a massive job to do. And I absolutely agree with you. But I hope that we are at the beginning of starting to do that job and certainly I hope that the investment that will take place over the next few years, which will involve governor and head teacher support and training will help us tackle that.

 

In terms of absence of people in education, I do agree. I speak at too many conferences really, if I’m honest, and there is now a real concern. One of the big issues, I’m sure as a teacher you know this, is the teacher shortage means that taking someone out of school to attend something like this, puts the school into crisis now. There just isn’t that kind of cover there. So I do agree that schools and teachers and LEA’s must be involved in local partnership and I hope the day will come when we can ensure that more educators, as such, come to conferences like this. But I agree with both your points.