Outdoor Education Advisers' Panel

Sedentary lifestyles are making children less fit - even among those who are not obese, a study suggests.

Essex University staged fitness tests on 600 10-year-olds a decade apart in an area with low levels of obesity.

They found significant falls in fitness levels, concluding the average 10-year-old in 1998 could beat 95% of youngsters in 2008 in running tests.

The researchers said the focus on obesity was obscuring the health risks of wider declines in fitness levels.

Children are routinely weighed and measured in schools in England as part of the government's drive to tackle rising obesity rates, but there is no equivalent for fitness. More...

Council for Learning Outside the Classroom Conference Judith Hackitt CBE, HSE Chair, 3 December 2009 More...

Teachers and others will now find it easier to take young people out and about as Schools Minister Diana Johnson today launched a consultation on simple and straightforward guidance to cut red tape. Teachers and others will now find it easier to take young people out and about as Schools Minister Diana Johnson today launched a consultation on simple and straightforward guidance to cut red tape. More...

Outdoor Adventure Week 2010 - PRESS, PUBLICITY AND PR EVENT – to help you use OAW010 to raise your profile in the media” More...

Article in Daily Mail on ISA vetting of Host Families for Exchange students.

More...

Education journalist Mike Baker traces the controversial changes to the ways we have educated our youngest children over the past 150 years

More...