Irish Teacher: Wellbeing in schools? Let's provide proper facilities instead

Jennifer Horgan: "here we are in 2023, moving backwards, not forwards"

Here’s an idea. Let’s talk a little less about wellbeing in curricula, and provide proper facilities instead.

I love words and I pay attention to them. I recognise when they’re being used to distract and conceal. Wellbeing is one such word. Any teacher can give a wellbeing lesson to tick a box. We can lecture young people on the importance of a balanced diet and regular exercise. We can stay up late at night finding the best images, the most impactful statistics to really make that PowerPoint pop. But a smug ‘job done’ attitude won’t lessen the sobering reality – that a class is sitting down for yet another hour instead of, I don’t know, moving around a bit.

The problem in my school is that there’s nowhere to move. We can go for a walk if I give plenty of notice and have staff to cover the student/teacher ratio, and if the weather behaves. PE classes are bussed to local facilities for lessons. We make do. But we don’t have a pitch and we don’t have a hall.

More time needs to be given to exercise during the school day, but the problem goes beyond the curriculum. It’s infrastructural. Too many school buildings are not fit for purpose.

Some don’t exist at all. We are in our seventh year of waiting for our promised school. So, come every lunchtime, my students stand around outside or sit down inside, because there is nowhere for them to run or play.

On June 30, 2022, Norma Foley informed the Oireachtas that approximately 1,200 school building projects were in progress across the various stages of planning, design, tender and construction – most of which were expected to be either under construction or completed in the period 2021 to 2025. The Department of Education confirmed last week that 58 school building projects due to go to tender or construction this year are now on hold due to funding issues.

Emer Nowlan, CEO of Educate Together raised important points when she called it a “false economy” – considering the increase in temporary accommodation and transport costs; she also expressed fears that it will have a “wider impact on the school building programme”.

The cost of allowing children to sit or stand still all day is incalculable. Ireland is one of the countries with the lowest mental health rate, according to the third Annual Mental State of the World (MSW). 

An Irish expert on obesity, Dr Grace O’Malley, predicts that by 2060 over 88% of the Irish population will be overweight or obese. We need to get children moving. We need to get them eating well too. That’s what wellbeing is about at its core. We need to genuinely do wellbeing, actually pay for it, or remove it from school curricula.

We are very far off healthy school dinners, but all schools need fully equipped kitchens to teach children, of all genders, how to make a decent meal and maintain a healthy diet if we are committed to wellbeing. 

The ESRI Growing Up in Ireland research initiated in 2009 revealed that more than a quarter of our nine-year-olds were overweight at that time. The seriousness of the situation has since escalated. In a paper to Government back in 2016 the Irish Primary Principal’s Network (IPPN) stated “International health experts recommend 45 minutes of vigorous physical activity per day for primary school children”. 

It’s hard to do that when you’re surviving in prefabs without communal space in a wet climate. In the same position paper, the IPPN called for “The provision of indoor and outdoor PE facilities in all schools.”

And here we are in 2023, moving backwards, not forwards, with some schools waiting decades for adequate buildings for children.

The World Obesity Federation is calling on countries to develop and implement comprehensive national action plans to tackle the serious public health issue of obesity.

As I often do in this column, I turn my gaze towards Finland, the country that blazed a trail in the 1940s by introducing Child Health centres. In recent years, the Finnish Government has declared that children need approximately three hours of physical activity a day. They have upped their Physical Education hours but also employ non-traditional ways of teaching. I wish I had such options.

Until a true commitment to wellbeing is made in Ireland, involving appropriate spaces and facilities in our schools, young people, all young people, but especially young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds, will suffer.

Wellbeing? Spare me. If our Government isn’t willing to spend money on it, they shouldn’t expect teacher or student buy-in.