Wells Hall Primary School, England

Wells Hall Primary School have been doing The Daily Mile for over 18 months now! All 420 students, including nursery, run The Daily Mile either around the school field or on the playground if the weather is particularly bad.

Our experience with The Daily Mile has been really positive. The children look forward to it as well as the teachers and what works really well is the flexibility to do it when the children need it. This has shown as a great ‘brain break’ and children, in general, are refreshed ready to either carry on with their learning or move onto the next lesson.

The children’s concentration levels are also much better once they’ve taken part in The Daily Mile. We’ve seen a definite improvement in the children’s focus and some cases of positive behaviour change.

The teacher’s mental health is also improved and The Daily Mile has definitely created a greater rapport and interaction between some children and their teachers as we use the opportunity to show the children our human side. As such, relationships between children and teachers has been enhanced as a result of The Daily Mile. It also gives us a chance to catch up with ‘quieter’ children who seem keen to chat outside the classroom.

Children are starting to enjoy recording their progress and the repetitive theme of the benefits of fresh air and exercise seem to be understood easier by the children when we talk about it during The Daily Mile. We also have a leader board up now which is popular and the kids are always keen to put their results up.

The Daily Mile is contributing towards forming good habits and we’ve encouraged a healthy selfie board with pictures of physical activity that the children and/or their families are doing outside of school.

When we began The Daily Mile there were a few initial queries from parents about why the children weren’t doing it in their PE kits, but on the whole everyone has embraced it positively.