Principal Report

20 MINUTES OF ACTIVITY THREE TIMES A WEEK

According to a new study led by Kathryn Weston, from Teesside University in the UK, very short intervals of high-intensity physical activity could have a range of health benefits for children. Known as FFAB (Fun Fast Activity Blasts) the exercises yields benefits with as little as 20 minutes of alternating activity and rest, three times a week.

In the study one group received FFAB training; the other received no intervention and were simply monitored. The three weekly sessions began with five minutes of warming up followed by four 45-second bursts of activity, each of which was followed by a 90-second rest interval. At the end of the sessions there was a five minute period of cool-down exercise.

The students could choose from four different types of exercise based around basketball, boxing, dance or soccer. The basketball drills, for example, involved such activities receiving and returning a chest pass, then running to a cone and running back; and bouncing a basketball five times, then running to the end of a gym and running back.

At the end of the study, the intervention group was in better shape than the control group and was even doing more exercise outside the programme. At a time when too many children are suffering the physical consequences of getting almost no exercise at all, it seems even a little bit can make a big difference.

"We cannot rely on extraordinary people to deliver twenty-first-century education to all our children; not enough such people exist. We have to deploy strategies that empower the learners and teachers as they are, where they are."

"Project-Based Learning Needs More Learning" by Gisèle Huff in Thomas B. Fordham Institute, August 3, 2016

"…freedom is more important than equality; that the attempt to realise equality endangers freedom; and that, if freedom is lost, there will not even be equality among the unfree."