Food & Health Alliance

The Class Moves! programme consists of a number of relaxationexercises for use with primary school children of all ages. These exercises aregrouped by theme and age and are listed on a wall-mounted monthly calendar,which follow a stage-related development plan. The programme aims to encouragechildren to engage in different types of physical exercises on a daily basis.The desired outcomes for pupils include: increased motivation and improvedconcentration; raised physical awareness and sensorimotor development, andinjury prevention and self-care.

The Health Education Board for Scotland (HEBS), (now known as NHS Health Scotland) in association with sportscotland and the National Assembly for Wales commissioned the Scottish Council for Research in Education (SCRE) to evaluate pilots of The Class Moves! programme in three Scottish and twelve Welsh schools.

The main aims of this evaluation were:

• to review the nature and contents of The Class Moves!resources related to the activities introduced in the programme
• to review and evaluate The Class Moves! programme for implementation in three Scottish schools and three Welsh Schools that were piloting the programme
• to assess the feasibility of The Class Moves! programme within the classroom setting
• to predict the replicability of the outcomes of The Class Moves! programme in Scottish and Welsh primary schools.

The study was largely qualitative and used detailed studies involving three Scottish and three Welsh Pilot schools. The main methods were:

• observation of The Class Moves! in operation in the classroom
• headteacher and teacher interviews, both at the start of the evaluation and at the end
• pupil group interviews
• teacher diaries/logs.