The Lady Mayoress visits pioneering Life Education project run by children's charity Coram
29th September 2011
The Lady Mayoress, wife of the Lord Mayor of the City of London, has visited a pioneering project run by leading children’s charity Coram, which gives children better chances of leading happier and healthier lives. The lucky school was St Luke’s CE Primary in Westbourne Park, who laid down the red carpet for her visit onTuesday 27th September.
The Coram Life Education programme reaches 800,000 children every year in nearly a quarter of UK schools and teaches life skills to children aged 3-11 years old, using fun, interactive and age-specific activities. It has been designed by child development experts and delivered by qualified educators in specially-designed mobile classrooms. Coram Life Education staff work with teachers to tailor sessions to a class’s specific age, curriculum framework and needs. Using stimuli-rich and interactive techniques such as puppetry, role play and clips from films, the programme captures children’s imaginations to enable them to develop critical thinking and risk management skills.
This multi-media programme has recently been given a boost by the BBC Connect & Create team who have given the project’s much-loved character Harold the Giraffe a make-over. The BBC team also created two exciting new puppet friends for Harold - Derek and Kiki – to accompany him on his adventures+ as they all explore the key issues facing children today in four new films. The puppets have been brought to life by BAFTA-nominated Phil Fletcher and Warrick Brownlow-Pike, the team behind CBBC’s anarchic Hacker & Dodge.
Recent research with children who have taken part in the Coram Life Education programme demonstrates its exceptional success rate: 87% of children knew more about keeping healthy; 76% recognised how their emotions and needs change in different situations; 88% understood how others influence the choices they make about smoking, alcohol and other drugs; and 69% reported they had learned to be more assertive. More than three-quarters of teachers interviewed said they ‘felt more confident’ to deliver PSHE and 85% ‘gained new ideas for the classroom’ after taking part in Coram Life Education. The programme costs £5 per child.
Jan Forshaw, Education Services Director at Coram Life Education, said: “With UK children languishing at the bottom of the international happiness league tables, it is now more important than ever that schools have access to a well-evidenced and cost-effective programme like Coram Life Education to help children cope with increasingly complex life choices.”
For more information about Coram Life Education and availability in your area visit www.coram.org.uk/lifeeducation or call 020 7843 1290.
Ends
Notes to Editors:
The 'Bear Necessities appeal' and Coram
The Lord Mayor's Appeal this year, 'Bear Necessities - Building Better Lives', is aimed at helping children in London access education and have greater life opportunities; and at supporting international disaster relief.
It unites Coram, the UK's first ever children's charity, to offer better chances in life to children and young people in London and across the country, and RedR, a charity that trains and provides engineers and other relief workers to respond to worldwide emergencies.
About Coram Life Education
The Coram Life Education programme, established in the UK for over 20 years, is an internationally respected provider of high-quality and strongly evidence-based drugs and health education. It is used in over 4,000 out of the 16,971 schools in the UK, reaching more than 800,000 children every year. The programme, which is aligned with the National Healthy Schools objectives, uses a new nationally recognised and accredited outcomes evaluation framework that measures its impact and the value it adds to children in a school.
About Coram
Coram is the UK’s first children’s charity, launched in 1739, which helps some of the UK’s most vulnerable children to dramatically improve their life chances.
We intensively support 15,000 children and their families across the UK, run the nation’s most successful voluntary adoption service and reach more than 800,000 school children through Coram Life Education’s mobile health, drug and alcohol education classrooms.
Visit www.coram.org.uk to find out more about our work.
contact information
49 Mecklenburgh Square
London
WC1N 2QA
Tel: 020 7520 0300
Fax: 020 7520 0301
Email: chances@coram.org.uk