TheSchoolRun.com closure date
As we informed you a few months ago, TheSchoolRun has had to make the difficult decision to close due to financial pressures and the company has now ceased trading. We had hoped to keep our content available through a partnership with another educational provider, but this provider has since withdrawn from the agreement.
As a result, we now have to permanently close TheSchoolRun.com. However, to give subscribers time to download any content they’d like to keep, we will keep the website open until 31st July 2025. After this date, the site will be taken down and there will be no further access to any resources. We strongly encourage you to download and save any resources you think you may want to use in the future.
In particular, we suggest downloading:
- Learning packs
- All the worksheets from the 11+ programme, if you are following this with your child
- Complete Learning Journey programmes (the packs below include all 40 worksheets for each programme)
You should already have received 16 primary school eBooks (worth £108.84) to download and keep. If you haven’t received these, please contact us at [email protected] before 31st July 2025, and we will send them to you.
We are very sorry that there is no way to continue offering access to resources and sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused.
What supervised indoor play offers your child
Indoor play is not only great fun for kids but adventure play centres also provide huge health benefits with youngsters climbing, swinging, jumping, and pulling their way around the exciting play structures. They see it as play but they are in fact gaining 'exercise in disguise'.
Reports from the UK Department of Health show that less than a third of young children are sufficiently active, one in six is obese, and all this is resulting in an alarming rise in ill health and increasing long term costs for the NHS. To add weight to the argument it is predicted that a million children in England will be obese within five years and 50 percent of the whole population will be obese by 2050.
Start the Reception Learning Programme!
- Weekly maths & English worksheets direct to your inbox
- Follows the National Curriculum
- Keeps your child's learning on track
The problem with obesity is twofold. Firstly, the popularity of screen-based entertainment means that as a society, our activity levels are simply not high enough and, secondly, too many children get a poor, inadequately balanced diet. So parents must encourage and support improvement in both of these areas. And when it comes to exercise, this is where the fun-filled visits to indoor play centres come into their own.
Children's play to improve fitness
The benefits of indoor play are vast explains Janice Dunphy, chair of the Play Providers Association (PPA) (playproviders.org.uk), the association representing over 100 operators nationwide. “Kids develop socially, physically and emotionally through play and the PPA has coined the term ‘exercise in disguise’ to describe what our member sites offer. The children are too busy having such fun, that they don’t realise the great benefit it does for their long term health,” says Janice.
As an example, research conducted recently showed that in a two hour play session at one centre children took on average between 6,000 and 8,000 steps (the recommended daily amounts are 12,000 steps a day for a girl and 15,000 steps a day for a boy) which is an astonishing figure. So a lot of calories would be being burnt.
Activities at indoor venues, such as the climbing and the activity walls, use far more energy still, and will importantly aid the development of arm and shoulder muscles in children, thus improving motor skills and coordination which can help with a child’s handwriting, for example.
In today's digital age, it's very easy to lose sight of the short and long term health benefits of physical activity for children. Promoting exercise and healthy living from an early age gives children a better chance of growing into fit and healthy adults.
