Views & Opinion Helping challenged children negotiate the
busy playground Comment by education consultant Jennie Hine
Together with Chuckle Productions, a not-for- profit organisation that uses the power of creativity to promote learning, a lunchtime project has launched that aims to support children who may have some social, emotional and/or physical needs to negotiate the busy environment of the playground. Here’s why I believe such a programme is needed. Throughout the varied roles of my career, there has been a common thread – lunchtimes can be a difficult time for some pupils. Take a minute to think of those children who frequently forget the rules within the playground environment; the pupils who hold on to a lunchtime supervisor’s hand unsure of how to break into a new game; children who are not yet confident with navigating the intricacies of developing a friendship; or perhaps the pupil who hangs around the classroom wanting to help with jobs as he is not quite sure he can keep up with the fast paced game that his peers are playing. What impact does an unhappy, frustrating or lonely lunchtime have on pupils’ emotional well-being? Would it make a difference to a
child’s learning during the afternoon if they felt happier during lunchtimes?
The playground can be a challenging environment for many children but my experiences have shown that with the right level of intervention, expertise and support, it can also be a wonderful opportunity for pupils’ to practise and develop a range of social, emotional and physical skills. An obstacle to exploring this opportunity for many schools may be having a trained member of staff consistently available during lunchtime to plan, deliver, monitor, assess and evaluate a lunchtime intervention.
Working closely with Sara Christie, the director of Chuckle Productions who is also a paediatric physiotherapist, we identified that a tailored lunchtime provision could develop pupils’ social, emotional and physical skills. Together, we wrote a lunchtime programme, the overarching aim of which is to encourage social inclusion for all pupils - to inform children that everyone is different and to help them to understand how to accommodate these differences in a kind, respectful manner.
We were extremely fortunate to secure funding from Sovereign Play Equipment, the UK’s largest provider of school ground developments, and as a result, our concept has become a reality. With funding in place we approached Cooper Perry Primary School in Stafford to pilot the lunchtime project. The pilot was launched in January 2016 with a total of 18 pupils. The sessions run twice a week and include a range of group and partner activities based around our core aims essential for negotiating the playground, including turn- taking, developing gross and fine motor abilities and promoting self-esteem.
The pilot will run for two terms and will be evaluated on physical, social and emotional skill measures. After the first half-term we have received encouraging positive feedback from teachers and pupils. If the project continues to prove successful and we subsequently roll the programme out to more schools, then we hope that not only will pupils be developing a range of important life skills, but schools will notice an impact on their lunchtime environment and subsequent afternoon learning.
Jumping through data privacy hoops in the education sector
Comment by Greg Hanson, vice president business operations EMEA, Informatica
Data privacy has become a serious worry for the education sector in recent years. As recently as last week we saw the personal details of hundreds of students accidentally published on the University of Greenwich website. What’s more, rather than just names and addresses, other highly sensitive personal information was exposed. This included the mental health conditions of students and even more worryingly, a student’s asylum seeker status. Recent research conducted by 8Man and carried out by Govnewsdirect has shown that 55% of data breaches in the public sector originate from human errors, however, indicating a fundamental lack of security knowledge among data handlers within educational establishments. Of course, this is threatening on many levels. Not simply to institutions’ reputations and the confidence students and tutors have in data protection, but on a regulatory and cost level as well.
For example, universities and schools must comply with the Data Protection Act of 1998 (DPA), and those which fail to do so can incur fines of up to £500,000 from the Information
Commisioners’s Office (ICO). They also have to contend with individual lawsuits filed by the owners of leaked data, meaning that the total financial cost of a breach could run into the millions. Greenwich University is currently being investigated and has also launched its own inquiry into the breach, with plans to publicise the findings to demonstrate its commitment to future data security.
But what can be done to truly ensure that from the smallest school to the largest university that learning environments are secure from both insider threats and cyber attacks? The only way to protect what is most precious—the data—is to fundamentally re-architect security approaches to be data-centric. Security has to travel with the data, no matter where it goes. This means adopting an approach that focuses on identifying and analysing sensitive data in order to understand where it resides and where it proliferates across the network.
There are other methods that support this security strategy too. Universities and schools should invest in training to ensure that those with access to sensitive data are aware of the risks and
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know how to mitigate them. King’s College, for example, was required by the ICO to sign a pledge that it would introduce compulsory DPA training for all staff handling personal data. Students are increasingly aware of where their personal information is stored, used and protected. In an increasingly competitive education sector, institutions need to ensure their brand is protected and the unique relationship with students is preserved. In a world of social media where every student has a global voice and where decisions on which institution to attend are increasingly made on a peer-review basis, a negative brand perception could very quickly see dramatically falling enrolment statistics. Greenwich University have responded quickly to this issue, which illustrates the concern they have for their reputation.
As we move through 2016, it will be those institutions which master data protection through a combination of new security strategy and training that will be best placed to build trust among students, tutors and prospects and improve data breach resiliency.
March 2016
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