Need a revision break? Fancy something tasty and good for you to give you a bit of a boost? Here’s a recipe for some ridiculously easy flapjack-y/granola-bar type things. I don’t technically know what the official difference is, so maybe we should call them flap-olas or something as I have a feeling they are a bit of both!

The first thing to do is to melt some butter in a pan over a low heat, and then stir in either a bit of honey, maple syrup or some dark muscavado sugar (or a combination of the three). Now chuck in some oats, a couple of dessertspoons of flour (this will help stop the flap-olas from being too crumbly and totally falling apart), and then you can add in the really fun stuff…

Have a dig around your cupboards and see if you can find some dried fruit, nuts and seeds. Chopped apricots, raisins, cranberries, prunes, dates etc all work really well and so do almonds, hazelnuts and pistachios. If you’re feeling indulgent you could put some cocoa powder in or some chocolate chips. Stir everything together until you have a sort of oaty-mush that isn’t too dry, so that it will stick together. If it is looking a bit too dry, then squeeze in some more honey.

Now press the mixture into a lined tin and bake it in the oven at 180 for about 20 minutes. Take it out to cool.

If you want to make them extra luxurious you can drizzle some melted dark chocolate on top and sprinkle some seeds/crystallised ginger into the chocolate drizzle. Once the flap-ola is cool you can slice it up and enjoy with a nice cup of tea.

One minute we’re being told that children are eating too much and now there’s evidence that secondary school pupils are ‘not eating enough’…

The School Food Trust recommends that students should get a third of their daily nutritional intake from their lunchtime meal, but research suggests that most are currently only getting a quarter.

The School Food Trust recently completed a report on children’s nutritional habits at school, and the results have caused concern that pupils aren’t getting enough food at lunchtime. Not getting enough fuel at lunchtime means that pupils can’t concentrate as well in the afternoon. One of the main issues is that there are too many choices on offer and so often pupils don’t eat the right sort of foods to prepare them for the afternoon.

According to the School Food Trust, “The secondary school environment is more complex than primary, and the style of food service makes it more challenging to ensure that pupils are making healthy choices whilst catering for their needs at lunchtime.” And “despite huge improvements to what’s on the menu, teenagers are still not choosing food combinations that will give them enough energy and nutrients to stay alert all afternoon.”

The good news is that since new nutritional guidelines were put in place, double the number of children are now eating fruit and vegetables on a daily basis. There are also fewer unhealthy foods on the menu. In 2004, 43% of school pupils ate chips with their lunchtime meals, but this dropped to just 7% in 2011.

It is fantastic to hear that school students are generally eating healthier foods, but now we need to make sure that they are given guidance about balancing their nutritional intake so that they get a range of nutrients that will provide them with the energy they need to concentrate and work hard in the afternoon.

Mr Oliver is back in the news again after expressing his anger at Michael Gove, and accusing him of allowing nutritional standards in academy schools to plummet.

Thanks to Jamie’s amazing work a few years ago, which began with the programme Jamie’s School Dinners, the last government made radical changes to the nutritional guidelines for food served in schools. Since 2008, schools have been improving the quality of the food on offer to students, however it seems that standards are slipping, much to the disappointment of Oliver.
According to Oliver, education secretary Michael Gove is “playing with fire” by allowing academy schools to ignore nutritional guidelines. It is no secret that Britain is getting fatter; with approximately a third of children being classed as ‘overweight’ and obesity costs the economy millions of pounds every year. For the future of the UK, it is vital that we feed younger generations (and ourselves!) healthy food.

Oliver told the Observer Food Monthly Magazine that he has “nothing against [Gove] personally…but the health of millions of children could be affected by this one man”
. Gove is reluctant to impose guidelines on the head teachers of academies because he says he trusts the head teachers to deliver the best to their pupils.

However, many head teachers seem to have the schools’ bank balance, rather than their pupil’s health in mind, allowing vending machines into schools because they are so profitable. It has been reported by the Guardian that vending machines can bring in up to £14,000 a year to a school. So it is easy to see how money-hungry heads might want to keep them in their schools. Most state schools are only allowed vending machines that sell healthy snacks such as nuts, fruit and water, but academies are currently allowed to have those offering chocolate bars, crisps and other unhealthy items.

Jamie Oliver, whose explicit and vociferous comments against Gove’s attitude include: “This mantra that we are not going to tell [academy] schools what to do just isn’t good enough in the midst of the biggest obesity epidemic ever…The public health of 5 million children should not be left to luck or chance.” is not the only one applying pressure on the education secretary. Tory MP Zac Goldsmith tabled a motion in praise of Oliver’s campaign and the motion, which asks for academies and free schools to “adhere to the standards for school food so that the one million children now attending these schools can benefit from this commitment to their health and wellbeing”. So far 54 members of parliament have signed the motion.

I very much hope that Michael Gove does indeed take notice of the mounting pressure, and in the interests of the health of current students and future generations, he stops allowing nutritional standards to slip.

Today is the 23rd April; it’s Shakespeare’s birthday, and it is St George’s Day. Since most of us know who Shakespeare is, I thought I’d investigate a bit more about St George as I have to admit that I’m not very knowledgeable at all when it comes to our patron saint.

St George is really very old indeed and we celebrate him on the 23rd April because it is thought that the 23rd April AD 303 was the day he died. As far as records show, the first St George’s day celebrations took place in 1222 when the Synod of Oxford declared St. George’s day a feast day in England.

St George is famous for three main reasons: the St George’s cross flag, for slaying a dragon and because of the line ‘cry God for Harry, England and Saint George’ in Shakespeare’s play Henry V. But who exactly was St George…?

St George was a Roman soldier from Syria Palaestina who was born at some point in the latter years of the third century AD. According to legend a dragon once made a home for itself in the spring that provided water for the city of ‘Silene’ (thought to be Cyrene in modern Libya). In order to get water from the spring, which the citizens desperately needed to do, they would sacrifice a sheep to the dragon. However, soon the dragon got bored of sheep and took a liking to eating young maidens. For obvious reasons, this was far from ideal and highly unsustainable and luckily one day St George appeared and killed the dragon. The citizens were so thrilled that they all converted to Christianity.

Thanks to this legend St George is now most frequently depicted on a white horse killing the dragon and rescuing a distressed maiden. The dragon is often seen as an allegory for Satan or paganism.

In AD 303 the Emperor Diocletian decided that every Christian soldier in his army should be arrested, and all the other soldiers should offer a sacrifice to the Roman gods. This outraged George and he stuck by his faith and refused to be arrested. Diocletian did his best to convert George by bribing him with land and gifts, but George refused to abandon his faith. Eventually he was executed for his disobedience.

Between 1400-1700 St George’s Day was particularly widely celebrated, and although it is still marked in England, the festivities have waned somewhat over the past few hundred years. However you might still see some St George’s flags around today, and in Salisbury there is still an annual St George’s Day pageant. It is also seen as a good day to do very traditionally English things like have afternoon tea, watch Punch and Judy shows, go morris dancing and sing the hymn Jerusalem.

Are you doing anything to celebrate St George’s day? Let us know if you are, we’d love to hear from you!

Why is it that starting and finsihing things are the two hardest bits? Once you get going, and you’re in full swing (whatever you’re doing), it’s never as bad as you thought it would be. Psychotherapist Joka Van Wijk, has some great advice for students who find getting stuck into revision rather tricky…

Most of us are extremely good at procrastination, especially if we do not really look forward to what we have to do. It is amazing what our brains can come up with to avoid doing what needs to be done. Suddenly all kinds of tasks take up a sense of priority and we promise ourselves that after the next phone call or cup of tea we will really get started. The strange thing is that procrastination only makes us feel worse and nags away at our minds so we cannot really enjoy what we are doing anyway. By now as so often happens you could be nearly halfway through the day and so it is not really worth starting anything, right? WRONG, it is always worth it to get started!

Despite what people think, everyone has willpower. Think of all the different situations where you had no trouble getting on with something. The difference between procrastinators and non-procrastinators is that non-procrastinators have a strategy.

So make your list and schedule and START whether you will feel like it or not. The secret is not to wait until you’ll feel better first. Make the start first and then the feelings of accomplishment will follow after.

1. Make a list of all the different topics that need to be covered.

2. Break the workload down into manageable tasks. For each task that you have broken up, you will have a beginning and an ending.

3. Make a time table.

4. Start with the topics you’ll least enjoy, it will be great to get them out of the way.

5. Have regular short breaks every 20 minutes or so.

6. Make sure you eat healthy food and get a good night’s sleep, so body and mind can work well together.

It’s time for the Easter holidays to come to an end and give way to the summer term… Here are some things to think about and do as you gear up for the final term of the academic year…

-Do you know where all of your school uniform and sports kit is, does it fit and is anything missing? You might need an extra polo shirt for playing tennis in, or a lighter jacket now that the weather is a bit warmer. Ensure that you’re stocked up with everything you’ll need for the term, froom highlighters and notebooks, to netball socks and swimming hats.

-Have you checked that you’ve done all the homework that was set for the holidays?

-Are there any coursework deadlines rapidly approaching? If so, make sure you are on top of the work, and if not then get on top of it asap!

-How did you get on with your Easter revision? If you have started revising (and you really should have done by now), then why not assess how it went. Did you find effective ways of working this Easter? What can you do again when exam leave arrives and what will you change about the way you’ve been revising? Which topics do you feel you’ve mastered, which are still a challenge and which haven’t you looked at at all yet?

-Make sure you know exactly when all of your exams are and keep your statement of entry in a safe place.

-Make a plan for how you are going to move forward with your revision over the next few weeks.

-Are you going to take up any new sports or hobbies this term? Perhaps you could try your hand at badminton, or get a group of friends together to play rounders on a Sunday afternoon.

-Start thinking about the summer holidays as they will be appearing before you know it. Perhaps you’d like to book an adventure away, do some charity work, find some work experience or even some paid work. Schedule in some fun things so that you’ve got activities to look forward to when the going gets tough at school, and schedule in things that will help you move forward career-wise like placements and experience.

-Make some ‘new term resolutions’ so that you make the most of the next few weeks. Perhaps you’re going to get up a bit earlier so that you’re not in so much of a rush in the morning, or you’re going to always do your homework on the day that it’s set. A few tiny changes to your day will make all the difference.

Have a great term!

Free schools, grammar schools, faith schools, private schools… there all sorts of different kinds of schools, and now two football schools are being set up. Well, schools founded by football clubs…

Karren Brady, currently best known as Alan Sugar’s right-hand woman on The Apprentice, and also famous for being the first woman to run a football club (she took over at Birmingham City aged only 23, which is pretty extraordinary really), is the mastermind behind plans to set up a school in connection to West Ham. The location of the West Ham Academy is currently in discussion, but Education Secretary Michael Gove is backing the plans, and Brady is extremely keen to get the school off the ground.

Brady is particularly keen on helping to get more women into the business sector and sees setting up a school as a way to do so. She was quoted in the Sunday Times as saying. ‘I would love to do an all-girls’ school but I probably wouldn’t be allowed…[but] I would like 50% of the pupils to be girls. When I arrived at West Ham (where she is currently vice-chairwoman) there were no senior women at all. Now 50% of the management team are women, which I think is the least percentage that it should be. Someone opened a door for me; my job is to hold that door open to get as many women through it as possible.”

The plans for the West Ham-supported school are not purely football-related, but will help students to acquire skills in areas that are really useful off the pitch, such as finance, sponsorship, marketing and retail. The hope is that the students will have career options, without necessarily needing to go to university and get a degree after doing their A Levels.

Over in Merseyside, Everton football club is setting up another school, and the first pupils will walk through the gates in September. To start with there will be 120 pupils aged 14-19, and then will gradually expand in following years. Although prospective pupils have been warned that lessons will not all be out on the pitch with star players and that they will need to attend a full range of classes. Chris McGovern, chairman of the Campaign for real Education told the Sunday Times, ‘the children who attend will need to be able to distinguish between the celebrity status of the club and the realities of education, which means working hard. Provided pupils don’t confuse the two, the schools should be able to bring real benefits.’

I am very intrigued indeed about the future of the schools and wish them every success!

Without being totally fashion-obsessed – in fact I rarely buy clothes to be ‘on trend’ – I do believe in the importance of wearing things that make you feel good, especially for exams and interviews. When I took my finals at university I always put on a pair of high heels and some red lipstick because they made me feel confident! Wearing tracksuit bottoms and an old hoodie makes me feel dozy, and so I’d never wear slouchy things for an exam or assessment. So I was intrigued to read an article by the BBC’s Hannah Richardson on how dressing up and playing make believe games as a young child can help academic results!
The Effective Pre-school, Primary and Secondary Education project has been monitoring a group of 3,000 children in order to try and uncover the factors that lead to success at school. According to the research, parents who encourage their children to play make-believe games, learn nursery rhymes, read stories and play with letters and shapes are much more likely to do well at both primary and secondary school.
Another important factor is regular homework. There was a bit of a ‘to do’ recently when the government scrapped homework guidelines, leaving schools to decide how much work they give their pupils to do at home. This study shows that it really is important for children to do some work at home in order to support work done at school.
The study places great emphasis on the role of parents in children’s learning and says, “If parents focus on their children’s learning when they are very young it raises their attainment at Key Stage 2 on average by a whole national curriculum level, which is equivalent to about three years of school.”
So, if you have young children encourage them to play games that stimulate their imagination and make sure you encourage them to do some maths and English activities as well, as it will put them in great stead for the future.

What a glorious weekend we’ve had! I have been so enjoying admiring all of the gorgeous daffodils that have sprung up all over the place and have also been munching (probably too many) hot cross buns.

If you’re looking for some fun things to do and make over the holidays, here are some suggestions for you…

-Make your own daffodils using green straws, card and yellow crepe paper.

-Make a family of Easter bunnies by cutting rabbit shapes out of card, decorating them with beads, bits of material and sequins.

-You can create delicious Easter nests by melting chocolate, mixing in mashed up shredded wheat cereal and then forming little nests in cupcake cases. Once they’ve set, put in some small chocolate eggs. Yummy!

-Here’s a great hot cross bun recipe adapted from one by the Guardian’s Dan Lepard:

Ingredients: 150ml apple juice at room temperature, 1 7g sachet fast-action yeast, 75g wholemeal flour, 150g double cream, 4 tsp mixed spice, 2 medium eggs, 50g honey, 300g mixed dried fruit, 400g strong white flour, 25g cornflour, 1 tsp salt, Oil for kneading
For the cross: 150g plain flour_50ml sunflower oil_125ml water
For the spice glaze: Half a tsp mixed spice and 25g caster sugar
Mix the cider, yeast and wholemeal flour in a bowl and leave to bubble for 30 minutes. In a saucepan, whisk the cream, spice, egg and honey, put over a low heat and stir until just warm, about blood heat. Pour into the yeast mix and add the dried fruit. In another bowl, stir the flour, cornflour and salt, add the yeast mixture, combine to a soft, sticky dough and leave for 10 minutes.
Lightly oil a worktop, and gently knead the dough for 10 seconds. Return to the bowl, cover and leave somewhere warm for an hour, until risen slightly. Divide into 12 roughly 100g pieces, shape into balls and put on a tray lined with nonstick paper. Cover and leave to rise somewhere warm until almost doubled.
Mix the cross ingredients and spoon into a piping bag with a plain 0.75cm nozzle. Heat the oven to 220C (200C fan-assisted)/425F/gas mark 7, pipe crosses on the buns and bake for 15-18 minutes. Remove and leave until almost cool. Boil the spice, sugar and 25ml water until syrupy, brush over the buns and they’re ready to roll.

-Make some beautiful decorations by boiling an egg and then painting it with jolly patterns.

-Set up an Easter egg hunt for your friends. Make sure you remember how many eggs you’ve hidden though!

Enjoy!

Last week I wrote about the number of British students applying for places at universities in America, and now the US is back on the blog as it sounds like exciting things are happening at an inner city school in the Big Apple.

A project called ‘iZone’ (aka Innovation Zone) has been launched in order to try and transform struggling inner city schools. In Sean Coughlan’s article for the BBC about the project, Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York is quoted as saying, “The challenge we face is nothing less than transforming our schools from assembly-line factories into centres of innovation.”

The project has got ambitious aims and intends to find ways of offering more tailor-made education for students, reinvent ways of learning and find out how technology can be used most effectively in classrooms. There is a concern in many New York schools that the current system is very far from serving the needs of each individual student. In my opinion it is impossible to find a ‘one size fits all’ system for students, but it is encouraging to see that projects such as iZone are working hard to try and improve the quality of education for the diverse students attending inner city schools.

Brooke Jackson, who is the principal of the NYC Lab School in Manhattan is acutely aware of the variety of her pupils’ needs and has said “We have students who are ready for graduate level work now – and we have students who will not make progress unless they’re in a three to one staff situation. Having them in a class of 30 is not going to get results.” Ms Jackson is particularly keen to finding new patterns and timetables, and so is experimenting with new ideas as part of the iZone project. Yoga, sharing school facilities, improving social awareness and encouraging self-motivation are all things that Jackson is exploring in her school.

IZone currently has three main strands of focus: the curriculum, integrating online learning and assessing innovation. 81 schools are currently involved in the project, but there are plans to expand to 400 schools by 2014.

The project sounds fascinating, challenging and potentially very beneficial for students. It will be interesting to see how things progress and what the impact of it will be.