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Sleep and habits, playground games and ECT expectations vs reality

4 February 2025

Hey Tappsters!

We have a winner!! 🥇Now is the time to check your app to see if you have won the prize draw ! We have a new prize draw starting next week – so keep your eyes open for some questions and announcements…


But what has Teacher Tapp learned this week? Here are the findings…

Want to keep your resolutions? Get snoozing…

Last month, a story about a research paper on sleep and habits made the news. The research found that “sleepiness causes people to rely on non-reflective processes such as habit to regulate their behaviour.“. In other words, keeping new resolutions or breaking old habits is hard when you’re tired.

To find out if Teacher Tappers were experiencing similar patterns, we asked about sleep, and New Year Resolutions…and discovered those who slept better were more likely to have kept their New Year Resolutions.

26% of those who reported “very bad” sleep had not kept any of their New Year Resolutions, compared to 9% of those who had “very good” sleep 😴.

Even those who described their sleep as “fairly bad” were more likely to have broken their resolution by the end of January, compared to of those with “fairly good” sleep (15% vs 9%).

Lack of sleep can be an indicator that other difficult challenges are currently present in someone’s life: caring responsibilities, ill health, poor living conditions…the list goes on! All of these things can be factors in why someone’s resolutions aren’t kept, so it probably isn’t an easy win to just say ‘sleep more’.

However – this does suggest that for those who could sleep more that more time in bed could help stamp out bad habits!

RIP hopscotch

From breaking habits to breaktime play – what is happening in primary playgrounds? And is it the same as five, ten, twenty years ago?

Compared to 2019, equipment in primary playgrounds appears to have decreased.

🧍‍♂️🧍‍♀️ 74% had hopscotch painted on the playground, DOWN from 81%.

🪢 67% provided skipping ropes, DOWN from 79%.

⚽️ Just 9% let children bring in balls, DOWN from 18%.

The drop in games has been noted by teachers, with those in the classroom the longest feeling the most strongly that games have “decreased significantly” (56%).

What is the cause for the change? Over 1,000 teachers shared their thoughts to the open question, with many blaming an increase of screen and tablet use, and a lack of knowledge about games among children.

Children don’t know how to play unless taught, and that doesn’t always happen. Some schools don’t have the playground markings. Schools don’t all have equipment due to funding.

“Children don’t play out when at home due to online gaming and social media. Therefore, they don’t know how to play when at school.”

“Lack of funding to provide playground games. Children don’t know how to play—no experience ‘playing out’ after school. Schools can’t afford to replace broken equipment, lunchtime staff are stretched, and there’s no budget to train them to lead games.”

Has your school bucked this trend? Let us know what you think by messaging in via the app using the contact us feature in settings. 📲

Support for scorecards

Ofsted ‘scorecards’ or ‘report cards’ are in the news again. Teachers have been asked to give their feedback on the new plans.

When previously asked, support for the new approach varied between primary and secondary phases. More secondary classroom teachers ‘strongly support’ the new plans compared to primary (15% vs 21%), and more secondary SLT (including headteachers) ‘strongly support’ the plans compared to primary (17% vs 11%).

Expectation vs Reality

Before embarking upon the ECT year, most trainees have a good grasp of what life in the classroom is going to be like. However, the challenge of the first ‘proper’ year can still bring up surprises.

Primary and secondary differences

There were significant differences between the phases – only 24% of primary teachers foresaw behaviour as a future challenge, whereas 54% of secondary teachers felt the same.

But now the ECT has started, there was a small increase in primary teachers finding behaviour the biggest challenge (28% UP four percentage points) and a small decrease in secondary (42% DOWN 12 percentage points).

You can read more about how schools have adopted the ECF in our report ‘The first 18 months of the ECF‘.

Daily Reads

This week our most-read blog was on cutting out written marking.

Have you seen a great blog you think would make a great daily read? Let us know by emailing england@teachertapp.co.uk and we will check it out!