Faking illness to get out of a PE lesson used to be a rite of passage, but today’s young people enjoy the subject too much to want to miss it, a poll suggests.
Three in four pupils in the UK say they like PE classes, with a quarter saying that they “love it”, according to the YouGov poll of 706 eight- to 15-year-olds and 1,096 parents with children aged 18 and under.
Just under one in four (23 per cent) of the 700 youngsters surveyed by the Youth Sport Trust and Bupa said they did not like the subject.
But their parents were far less positive about their memories of school sport, with more than half (56 per cent) saying they had lied to get out of lessons. The most popular excuse was feigning illness, followed by faking a note from their mother or father.
Boy who wanted more homework
A 14-year-old boy has been excluded from school for two days after leading fellow pupils in a class walkout – because he wanted more homework.
Aaron Parfitt organised the mass gathering on the playing fields of his school in Blackpool, Lancashire, after complaining he was not getting enough homework to help with his maths, after he had failed an exam, and about a high turnover of teachers in the subject. Up to 100 pupils joined him.
Last year, Bispham High School was threatened with closure and put into special measures after it was labelled ‘inadequate’ by Ofsted inspectors, who said there was too much “mediocre teaching”. Acting headteacher Deborah Hanlon-Catlow told the Blackpool Gazette this was “a challenging time for the school”.
Fans can mourn character’s death
Fans upset about a main character’s death in the just-concluded episode of MTV’s Teen Wolf now have a special place to go to let off steam.
The network said it is launching a special website for fans to pay tribute to the character Allison Argent, who was killed by a sword wielded by a mythical Japanese demon. On the site, cast members offer ‘eulogies’ and actress Crystal Reed explains that her character was killed off because she wanted to move on and do something else.
Killing a TV character is not new, but MTV is taking an interesting step by offering an advertiser-sponsored site, TeenWolfMemorial.com, for fans to mourn.
Tourists see night court in action
While visiting New York – a city synonymous with theatres and nightlife – Jenny Baumann, 26, from Munich, Germany, chose to perch on a scarred wooden bench in a utilitarian room in lower Manhattan to see a night court in action.
“It’s very interesting to hear real cases,” she said as she watched a judge decide whether to set bail for people facing charges ranging from choking a girlfriend to stealing a six-pack of beer. It is one of New York’s more peculiar tourist traditions, a place visitors extol on travel websites while many residents hope never to end up there.
Dozens of jurisdictions across the US hold sessions at night, but Manhattan Criminal Court occupies a unique spot in the public’s imagination, thanks to TV’s Law & Order and the comedy Night Court.
No guitar-playing in prison, please
Guitar-playing prisoners in Britain have been ordered to return their electric and steel-stringed instruments after the government banned them, a Labour frontbencher has said.
Kevin Brennan, himself a guitarist, demanded to know why the Coalition had ordered the return of the types of guitar on which the majority of modern rock and pop music is played. He said the likes of Johnny Cash and Billy Bragg have shown the importance of music and guitars in rehabilitating offenders.
Prisons Minister Jeremy Wright said the specifics of why electric and steel-stringed guitars were axed were beyond his level of expertise but added that he would ensure the restrictions were appropriate.
“You have, perhaps predictably given your level of expertise, got to a level of detail on musical instruments I’m not currently cognisant with,” he said.