MVC News Summer 2020

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Summer 2020

The News Magazine of Melbourn Village College, an Academy of The Cam Academy Trust

Lockdown Special Edition

The strangest of starts!

MELBOURN VILLAGE COLLEGE

New Assistant Principal Joanne Boniface joined Melbourn Village College from a school in Stevenage straight after Easter — and found nothing was as she expected!

A second new Assistant Principal, Euan Willder, will join MVC in September from Comberton VIllage College.

Starting a new job is always nerve wracking and daunting, but during these troubling times it has been particularly strange.

I was expecting to join MVC and be submerged into the busy hustle and bustle of hectic day to day school life but instead find myself in a calm and unnervingly quiet environment, with only a handful of students and staff in school and the focus having shifted to online learning.

Having said that, the staff have all been overwhelming welcoming and kind, which has made the transition much easier, and at least I have had time to get to know my way around!

The few students I have been lucky enough to meet have all been very polite and respectful and it has been a pleasure to spend time with them.

I look forward to welcoming in the new academic year in September and meeting the rest of the college community.

UNEXPECTED BEGINNING: Miss Boniface did not expect to join a virtually empty college!

Teamwork has been the key to successful changes

Staff and pupils at MVC have come a long way since March. When schools were locked down, teachers suddenly found they were expected to provide learningwithout any of their usual tools.

The whole idea of education as an interactive and communal process was removed and we had to reinvent it.

It has been a steep learning curve for staff, pupils and parents alike but we have all come a very long way together! We’re all now au fait with the use of Teams for Assemblies, live lessons and help sessions, as well as submitting work online.

I’ve seen some fantastic work created and shared using digital means and our challenge must now be to maintain the skills

At MVC we are committed to introducing Ipads to pupils over the next few years and will be in touch with you all about this in the Autumn term.

In the longer term it might turn out that the Coronavirus lockdown has a positive effect in moving digital learning forwards, to the benefit of our pupils.

ADAPTED: In addition, it has reaffirmed that education is a Staff, partnership between teachers, pupils and students parents and that we all need to work together if and we are to be successful.

I am hopeful that in years to come we can look parents have had back on this time as having had a positive to change impact on education and MVC staff will be working hard towards that aim. the way Simon Holmes, Principal they work.

we have all gained and to continue to build on them as we return to school in September.

I’ve also seen some great videos from staff; cooking with Mr Fan remains a personal favourite! (See Page 5)

Recognition for vital volunteer work

Thank you to the Duke of Edinburgh¶V $ZDUG SDUWLFLSDQWV from

Melbourn Village College who donated

299 hours of voluntary service to the local community* The social value of these hours is

£1,300 * Number of hours of volunteer service is based on participants who have achieved their Volunteering section between 1 April 2019 and 31 March 2020

June 2020

JACKIE BULL, DIRECTOR ± CENTRAL ENGLAND

Students from MVC participating in the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme have donated almost 200 hours of volunteering.

All those taking one of the DofE awards are required to undertake a minimum period of volunteering (depending on the level) and these have now been totted up.

Across the Central England region, an incredible 596,804 hours of volunteering have been carried out by participants.

This has provided £2,596,097 worth of social value back into local communities across the region.

And now MVC has received a certificate marking the 299 hours they contributed, providing an estimated social value of £1,300 (based on the minimum wage of £4.35 for under18s).

DofE programmes at CamVC are important in supporting

q Trust Update — Page 3 q Getting Students Online — Page 4 q Weather Topic captures Interest — Page 4 q Mandarin Excellence — Page 5 q Chinese Cooking Online — 2

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

Page 5 q Effect of Covid-19 — Page 6 q Students tackle Tricky Problems — Page 6 q Illuminating Work — Page 7 q Still Life in a Fast World — Page 8

the local community through this volunteering. In between homework, revising for exams and hanging out with friends, it can be difficult for young people to find the time to add another thing to their list. But despite all this and the DofE being somewhat curtailed this year, our pupils rose to the challenge.

DofE East Operations Manager Jack Harris said in a letter to the college: “Not only does volunteering provide vital support to local communities across the country, it also provides young people with the opportunity to take part in new experiences, develop new skills and feel a sense of pride in supporting the communities that they live in.

“Your DofE programme plays a significant role in supporting your Licensed Organisation’s local community through grassroots volunteering.”

q Bathed in Bright Colour — Page 9 q Exam Prep under Way — Page 10 q Sports News — Page 12my Front cover: GCSE art by Sammy (10Darwin)

Joint working benefits all THE CAM ACADEMY TRUST NEWS

It is worth asking why a school might bother joining a Multi-Academy Trust.

Of course, given current Government policy, this could be an issue forced on some schools.

Disregarding that, we would argue that there are very strong, positive reasons for joining a (good!) MultiAcademy Trust.

One part of the answer to this has been seen during the current lockdown that we have all found ourselves in since March.

Being a strong group of schools with some meaningful central infrastructure to support all schools in the group has been invaluable during this time.

Headteachers and other staff have worked closely with each other to develop ideas and appropriate ways of working, given the major changes and challenges that we all face.

This very much includes working and teaching

Royal date for CEO

EXHIBITION SLOT: For Rowan’s painting of Stephen Munday.

A portrait of Trust CEO Stephen Munday has been accepted into the Royal Academy Young Artist Exhibition 2020, both online and onsite.

The painting, by Comberton Year 10 student Rowan, to mark Mr Munday’s time as Executive Principal of Comberton Village College — a post he relinquished last summer — is due to hang in the school.

However, it will now be diverted to the Royal Academy for display at the Young Artist Exhibition, which has been delayed until the autumn due to the Coronvirus pandemic.

This is the second successive year that Rowan has had a painting accepted for the exhibition as last year a painting of fellow pupil ‘Anna’ was shown.

The exhibition lasts around six weeks and Mr Munday has plans to surprise his adult children with a visit as they don’t know the picture has been selected (unless they happen to read this magazine!)

The online exhibition opened on July 12 and Rowan’s painting can be viewed here https://youngartists.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibitions/2 020/9627

effectively online.

This has been strongly supported by the Trust’s central IT team.

More generally, we strongly believe that, as long as we get it right, we are all far better off when working together rather than seeking to plough our own narrow furrows.

This is at the heart of what we seek within our Trust.

Recently, some significant and serious work has begun on developing stronger effective joint working in particular areas of our Trust: l Everton Heath/Gamlingay Village/Offord Primary schools joint working. These three schools are now moving forward to look at how they can operate effectively, working as one larger group where appropriate. This is being led by the Heads of the three schools and supported by Chris Jukes, our Primary Executive Lead. l Hartford Infant/Hartford Junior/Thongsley

Fields/St Peter’s School. These four Huntingdonbased schools are now looking seriously at working more closely together and moving forward jointly in several significant areas. This includes seeking to drive moves to work positively and support the Oxmoor community that the schools all serve. l Trust Sixth Form development. We are looking seriously at how the Sixth Form provision across our schools can work effectively in a joint way. This most obviously immediately involves St Peter’s School and Comberton Sixth Form looking at working together.

However, it also involves seeking to develop a Mandarin course in our Sixth Form provision from September 2021 that will need to be staffed by Melbourn teachers.

Included alongside is planning for the hoped-for development of a Sixth Form at Cambourne and that this can become part of this joint working.

Stephen Munday, CEO

Since lockdown started in late March, the Trust has been proactive in ensuring that the parent/carers of Free School Meal (FSM) recipients, have been helped over the period of closure.

Initially meals were distributed by schools, then when the government first announced its intention to set up a national voucher scheme, our Trust was already ahead of the curve.

We worked with a local software provider to subscribe and distribute e-gift vouchers on a fortnightly basis for use in local supermarkets.

Across all 11 schools in our Trust we assisted more than 820 recipients with a £15 a week voucher.

After around eight weeks, the Government released its national platform, which initially was given bad press, but which we had to transition to. This has been running since May and recipients have become very used to the system and there have been few problems.

Due to Parliamentary lobbying from Manchester United and England striker Marcus Rashford in a high-profile campaign, the Government then agreed to support the funding of the scheme through to the end of August to ensure children do not go hungry in

the summer holidays.

From late March until the end of August, the Trust will have issued more than £290,000 of vouchers to more than 820 recipients thanks to the hard work of Finance teams and delegated representatives in each school.

If anyone has any issues with FSM vouchers over the summer break, please contact the Trust on fsm@catrust.co.uk Mark Norman, Director of Finance & Operations

Families given food help

TAKEAWAY: Initially schools prepared food for those entitled to Free School Meals.

Schools’ support for NHS The Trust’s secondary schools helped to ensure NHS staff were properly equipped to deal with patients with Coronavirus at the start of the pandemic.

All four — Comberton, Cambourne, Melbourn and St Peter’s — donated their science safety glasses to Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge and

DIFFERENT USE: Science goggles were donated to the NHS as PPE.

Hinchingbrooke in Huntingdon.

The decision for the Trust to offer help with PPE equipment for our local hospitals came through Melbourn Village College Deputy Principal Niki Smith, who had a contact at Hinchingbrooke.

Initially Nic Johnson, a paediatrician, said the Huntingdon hospital had sufficient PPE equipment so the offer was made to Addenbrooke’s and Melbourn’s supply of 157 pairs of glasses were delivered there.

Then Ms Smith was told Hinchingbrooke staff were running out of PPE so she contacted the other secondary schools in the Trust, who agreed to donate their supplies, and she took in excess of 500 pairs of safety goggles usually used for science at Comberton and Cambourne.

The supply of 430 pairs from St Peter’s School, Huntingdon, was collected the following week and delivered to Addenbrooke’s.

For job vacancies across the Trust, visit the CAT website at www.catrust.co.uk

3

Getting students online MELBOURN VILLAGE COLLEGE

Students at Melbourn Village College who struggled to access technology to complete online work were given help from three different sources during lockdown.

Initially it was the Cambs Youth Panel who supplied Chromebooks to students with the most pressing needs and these were delivered by officers from Cambridgeshire Police.

The next donations came from Meldreth Coronavirus Community Support, who collect unwanted computers, laptops, screens, mice and keyboards and build new ones to share with students — and older members of the community — who need them.

Then most recently the college was gifted 10 personal computers, complete with monitors, keyboards and mice, as well as a laptop, by long-established Fowlmerebased Saker Computer Technology.

Saker owner Tim Jackson made the donation, worth in excess of £2000, after hearing about the difficulties the school and students were having in ensuring everyone can work remotely.

He said: “It is taken for granted that every child has access to a computer at home, but it isn’t always the case and I feel that all children should have equal learning opportunities. If I could help in a small way, then I was very happy to.”

Tim then further donated 20 wireless adaptors after hearing from Deputy Principal Niki Smith, herself a specialist Computer Science teacher, about the problems Melbourn were having in sourcing this vital piece of kit.

Ms Smith said: "We are very grateful for the kindness of Mr Jackson. The PCs he has supplied have immediately been lent out to pupils who had been struggling getting access to their online work before this wonderful intervention.

“The kindness of people is circular - we gave away PPE to the NHS and care homes, and then received wonderful donations of IT equipment ourselves!"

Susan van de Ven, a local councillor and Melbourn VC governor who chairs the Meldreth Support groups said: “We are building new computers out of secondhand donations, to supply Melbourn Village College students who are on home study due to Covid-19 but lacking home computers. We'd also like to make them available to elderly, isolated residents, who'd like to get set up on the internet for the first time.”

The computers are rebuilt by engineer Andy Thomas, at home in Meldreth on his kitchen table. They are then PAT tested by electrician David Coton. The first lot of new computers were delivered to Melbourn Village College at the height of the pandemic to the delight of Headteacher Simon Holmes, who said: ‘“We’re extremely grateful for this equipment as it has made a significant

GIFT: Deputy Principal Niki Smith accepts new computers from Tim Jackson of Saker Computer Technology. difference to those children and families who received it. Home schooling is not something any of our parents expected to be doing and for those children who have been trying to access their work on a phone or sharing a tablet or family computer, this was a huge step forwards. Our thanks go to all who have donated.”

Susan added: “More computers are in the process of being rebuilt, but extra monitors are needed, as well as keyboards and mice. Laptops are particularly useful. Whatever might seem too old or unworkable can be stripped for spare parts – everything is useful.”

Some historical nuggets lie within: Award-winning children’s author Frances Hardinge said of her donation: "This was my laptop while I was writing ‘A Face Like Glass’ and the first half of ‘Cuckoo Song’. It's helped me conjure up underground labyrinths, exploding cheeses, screaming dolls and supernatural secrets. I hope it will be of use to somebody else now!"

Another children’s author, Rhiannon Lassiter, donated her old ibook G4, still worth a bob or two, so this will be sold to raise funds to pay for spare parts.

Computer gaming guru Alistair Halsby has donated the smallest and largest computers so far.

He said: “Both have about the same power — time shrinks things! The large computer was, in its day, an example of the best money could buy.”

If you have any donations to contribute, please contact Susan van de Ven: susanvandeven5@gmail.com or 07905325574.

Weather topic captures extra interest

REBUILD, RECYCLE, REUSE: Computers are put together from spare parts, handed over to MVC, then delivered to students.

Year 7 student Duncan has set up his own weather station as part of the weather and climate topic in geography. He has been recording the weather since the start of lockdown. He has taken pictures of clouds, recorded daily temperatures, air pressure and rainfall and logged it all on graphs.

His teacher, Andrew Kennedy, is very impressed. “He has done all of this under his own steam and is a fantastic example of a student taking their learning to the next level!”

He said.

“I know from the emails of his work and weather data that he sends me that he is really enjoying his geography and recording the weather has really helped him make the link between air pressure and how the rising and falling of the pressure affects the rest of our weather.

“I am really proud of his efforts.”

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MELBOURN VILLAGE COLLEGE

Mandarin excellence!

HIGH-QUALITY WORK: MEP students have produced written and spoken pieces in place of their annual progress tests.

Mandarin in Melbourn Village College continues to thrive despite the school closure.

The Mandarin Excellence Programme (MEP) cohorts in Years 7 to Year 9 have demonstrated their comprehensive communication skills through the high quality of their speaking and writing showcases this summer.

Due to the pandemic, the DfE cancelled the annual MEP hurdle tests, so to evaluate pupils’ progress, and more importantly, maintain their motivation, all the MEP students in England have had to produce one written project and one short speech in place of the cancelled tests.

More than 80 MEP students at MVC took up this challenge. They presented their fascinating ideas about topics from family to travel journal through accurate handwritten Chinese characters. Creative presentation and design of layouts made each writing showcase more personalised and one of a kind.

Students also recorded themselves speaking for one to two minutes about their family, a hobby or an area of interest.

With high accuracy and fluency, their effective communication proves their hard work has all paid off. Some of the students also made the best of their video editing skills, enriching their speaking showcases with music and animations.

“It’s fantastic to see these young linguists confidently use their language skills presenting their ideas fully,” said Frank Fan, Joint Head of MFL. “I believe it’s also encouraging, not only to the MEP students but also to other young Mandarin learners to keep up the good work.”

UCL IOE Confucius Institute and British Council are going to choose some of the excellent work from the MEP schools to publish on their social media and publications. We look forward to the lovely work from MVC being seen across the country and even around the world.

Chinese cookery classes go online

Mandarin teacher Frank Fan has found a novel way to engage Melbourn students.

He has expanded his teaching repertoire to include home videos of Chinese cooking – complete with commentary entirely in Mandarin.

“I wanted to help students’ remote learning and keep them in good spirits during lockdown,” he said.

Mr Fan not only added in different topics which students have learned but also

WORK WITH CARE: More of the MEP student pieces.

made a performance of it with singing, dancing, Chinese Gongfu, sports and DIY. Each video came with questions which were then reviewed during video lessons through ‘Teams’, which have helped students improve their listening and speaking skills.

The feedback has been very positive, with students saying that they really enjoyed watching the videos and appreciated Mr Fan’s work.

WATCH AND LEARN: Joint Head of MFL Frank Fan conducts cooking lessons in Mandarin.

5

The effect of Covid-19 MELBOURN VILLAGE COLLEGE

On March 23rd, 2020, Boris Johnson announced the new lockdown measures for the UK, and the previous Friday schools were shut to all pupils except for the children of key workers.

Thousands upon thousands of students had to adjust to studying from home, and the schools had to adapt to suit the new need.

However, there have been many concerns from parents that children participating in online work are not learning as much as their peers that are still in school.

How legitimate are these concerns, though? Many also wonder if online live classes are safe from malicious hackings and similar threats.

With the rise of applications like Zoom and Microsoft Teams, many families with limited access to the internet are worried that their children miss out on essential education for prolonged amounts of time, and that may have a negative effect in the future.

They must also improvise if they do not have the necessary resources to teach in their households.

Schools have also had to cancel the GCSE exams for the summer, and instead, take the mock test scores as final scores.

Other tests in schools over the country have had similar fates.

The lockdown has left some young people unmotivated and lonely due to not being able to meet friends and family for months at a time.

In summary, students and teachers alike have had to adapt to a new form of teaching that does not involve being in close quarters.

There have been many challenges along the way, and lockdown continues to be a hurdle to education to young people and university students.

In the coming months, students will have much content to catch up on.

Emily (7Darwin)

In times of uncertainty — eat cake!

Students in KS3 have been trying their hands at difference challenges set by Food and Nutrition teacher Joanne Giles.

And that ended up giving her a whole new headache as everybody adapted to life in lockdown – choosing the winners!

She has been hugely impressed by not only the way that students have embraced the challenges but the standard of the food they have produced.

Of course, there was the almost obligatory BakeOff Challenge where students could bake and decorate a cake of their choosing. There was also the ultimate sandwich and pancake challenge with students choosing one or the other.

In addition, there was the opportunity to work on food photography, a massive global market, which aims to capture food and drink looking its best.

Kiera (8Franklin) and Jessica (8Darwin) won that with their picture of lemonade. They used contrasting colours, adding a slice of lime and ice cubes and setting the picture in an outdoor setting.

Other winners were Aliya (7Newton) for the most creative Lockdown Covid Cake (which was lemon and did not contain the virus!). She narrowly beat Isabel (7Newton) whose vibrant layers of well-risen sponge were neatly iced with a simple, effective design. Emma (8Darwin) was third with her beautifully piped cupcakes.

The top pancakes came from Oscar (7Hawking) for his fantastic presentation, Calum (7Lewis) for the most pancakes in a creative platter and Josh (7Franklin) for the best pancake photography, accompanied by a fruit

SCARY, BUT DELICIOUS: The ‘Covid’ cake was awarded top prize.

cocktail.

Lily Rose (7Newton) topped the ultimate sandwich competition. She broke away from the traditional use of bread to enter a well-filled, garnished and presented baguette.

Thomas (8Newton) earned a special mention for the best skill at making his own bagels.

Students tackle tricky maths problems

In a change to the usual written paper this year the UKMT Junior Challenge went ahead online.

The questions were still as difficult and all 120 students who sat the test would have stretched their maths skills to the limit.

Once again, we had some amazing scores from the Year 7s and 8s. Many students achieved superbly, getting Bronze and Silver certificates but special congratulations go to the Gold Certificate winners — Erin (8Newton), Tom (8Darwin), Duncan (7Hawking), Oliver i(8Hawking), Annabelle (8Lewis), Alex (7Lewis) and Alexander (7Hawking).

Thank you to all the students who participated and to all the parents who

6

supported the smooth running of the challenge.

To give you an idea of the difficulty of the challenge, here is an example question: Susan is attending a talk at her son’s school. There are 8 rows of 10 chairs where 54 parents are sitting.

Susan notices that every parent is either sitting on their own or next to just one other person. What is the largest possible number of adjacent empty chairs in a single row at that talk?

A3 B4 C5 D7 E8 Answer on Page 11

MELBOURN VILLAGE COLLEGE

Illuminating work . . .

Year 7 students have been very busy working on developing their art skills and conceptual thinking based on the theme of Illustration, Lettering and Illumination.

They started researching their favourite illustrator and then researched Illuminated Manuscripts and the

work of the calligrapher Gemma Black.

They had to show understanding of the key concepts of calligraphy and colour design work.

They ended the project by selecting a quote from Shakespeare and wrote it out using lettering designed in the style of Gemma Black.

The MVC Art Department has been delighted by the

breadth of response we have received from students

and we have displayed the work on Facebook for the

community to enjoy as well as a selection on this

page.

7

Still life in a fast world MELBOURN VILLAGE COLLEGE

Still life has been the art focus for students in Year 8 this term.

They have focused on the work of famous still life artist Morandi, starting with researching the Italian’s life and work before moving on to look at art inspired by his work.

They had to show understanding of the key concepts of his composition and colour work.

They ended the project by developing their understanding of line of symmetry, measuring, tone and observational drawing.

They used the limited colour palette of Morandi to add colour to their work.

Some students used time-lapse video to show their amazing drawing skills. These were uploaded to Facebook alongside some of their other work.

8

Bathed in bright colour

The spotlight has been on POP art for Year 9, in particular famous artists of this genre, Andy Warhol and Lichtenstein.

They researched the phenomenon in general before looking in more detail at the works of these two artists, showing understanding of the key concepts of the arts’ composition and colour work.

They ended the project by developing their

MELBOURN VILLAGE COLLEGE

understanding of what POP art represents, the use of images from popular culture, the use of bright colours and impactful composition.

There has been some really amazing work produced, which we are delighted to share with you, not only on this page but on social media as well.

9

MELBOURN VILLAGE COLLEGE

Exam prep is under way

Lockdown has given Melbourn’s Year 10 GCSE Fine Art students the perfect opportunity to really develop their skills ahead of next year’s final exams.

They selected a theme for their Year 11 mock exam preparation and selected two artists to research to explore their chosen theme.

They have looked at the artists’ key concepts, subject area and technique.

10

They have then applied that artist’s ideas to their own observational based work.

The results so far have been spectacular and we can’t wait to hold an exhibition of their best work next year.

Meanwhile we are delighted to share some examples with you — and many more have appeared on our social media feeds over the past few weeks.

Students rise to challenges Over the first week in July the PE department created a Virtual Sports Week to make up for the cancellation of our annual Sports Day this year.

There were 10 challenges for the students to complete, two a day. One challenge was a fun event – create your own obstacle course, put on 10 pairs of socks, high jump a stack of toilet rolls, flip a bottle while wearing a blindfold and shot put using socks (or a ball) - and one was more sporty and included a one-minute sit-up count, keepy-uppies, standing long or triple jump, a 3km or 5km run and the wall sit challenge. All proved very competitive!

Lots of staff, not just those in the PE department, made video demonstrations and these were put on a Powerpoint presentation for the students so they could see what they needed to do.

MELBOURN VILLAGE COLLEGE

The PE department would like to thank all the staff and students who took the time to send in their photos and videos as well as log their scores. It was great to see so many people having fun and being active.

The eventual winners were Darwin house, but Franklin were hot of their heels with a late surge of student successes!

The pupils had to log their scores via a Microsoft Forms link and the PE department analysed them each BOTTLE FLIP CHALLENGE: One of the ‘fun’ events evening, adding bonus points for the during Virtual Sports Week most creative and committed pupils. pairs of socks on — no excuses for being late next We never knew how fast some of you could put 10 year now!

Richard Barlow, PE Department

Turkey is final destination! The benefits of SOMETHING DIFFERENT: This year Sports Day became Sports Week and the events included the wall sit challenge, the homemade obstacle course challenge and the 10-sock challenge.

Students from Melbourn reached the beautiful Turkish city of Istanbul when they took on The Cam Academy Trust’s other schools in a Race Across The World.

Based on the BBC series of the same name, it was the first InterTrust virtual fixture and staff, students and their families were challenged to travel as many kilometres as they could in a week – by any self-propelled means possible.

Set up by staff in the Cambourne VC PE Department, it was a way of encouraging anybody linked to the Trust to be healthy and active. Using a link only available to those within the Trust, participants were encouraged to log daily how many kilometres they had covered by running, walking, cycling and other sporting endeavours.

Melbourn, the smallest school of the four

secondaries taking part, managed to cover 3104km to finish third behind winners Cambourne, who reached Mongolia, and Comberton, who landed up in Uzbekistan. St Peter’s School, Huntingdon, stranded in Ukraine, were fourth.

Melbourn were also third in the average distance covered per school entry, covering 10km, just behind St Peter’s and ahead of Cambourne, with Comberton the clear winners.

Top performers for Melbourn were Paul (7Lewis), Jan (8Darwin) and Alexander (7Hawking).

As a Trust, an incredible 19941.26km were covered to reach the island of Flores in Indonesia.

Well done to everyone who took part.

being active

For many of us, lockdown has been particularly difficult.

Everyone has missed out on something special to them and the frustrations and difficulties can sometimes be overwhelming.

This is why it is so important that we are still getting out and about and being active.

The guidelines for physical activity for children and young people is that they should engage in moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity for an average of at least 60 minutes per day across the week. For adults, they should aim to be physically active every day and should accumulate at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity activity across the week.

In a time when it is so easy to stay at home, whether working from home, home-schooling, watching the growing number of TV streaming services or playing computer games, it is essential that we buck the trend in a nation where obesity is on the rise.

The benefits of physical activity are endless and even just a 20-minute brisk walk in the fresh air can help us to reap both the emotional and physical benefits of exercise.

UKMT Junior Challenge: Answer is B — 4 chairs.

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