Water in schools - does it do any good?

[seeker]

OK, I know all the stuff about needing to be hydrated at all times. I do suspect that a lot of it is the result of cunning marketing by the bottled water industry, but that's another story.

What I am puzzled by is that I don't think anyone could say that children's attention spans have improved over the last few years. In fact, rather the opposite. So what's going on here? Are their brains possibly becoming waterlogged?

no one?

There is another school water thread on the go at the moment.

I know - but I don;t want to get into the legalities of searching lunchboxes and a Child's Right To Drink Crap.

I don't think it improves their attention as such but being thirsty would certainly hinder it, I'm terrible when I really need a drink, can't think about anything else

of water that is, don't mean to sound like an old soak!

I don't have any research links but I think it has been proven that keeping hydrated helps concentration - I'll have a look and see what I can find.

I'm pretty sure that for children with problems around weeing it does help to drink regularly although that will only be a small number in each class.

OK, here's one - you probably don't want to read it all but ref 13 is to a study which shows a link in children www.water.org.uk/home/water-for-health/medical-facts/concentration

I think this has been done to death recently.
Water is important to just about every process in the body

for ds2 drinking water has nothing to do with concentration levels - he has to drink regularly to stop himself being incontinent and constipated

but don't worry, we're not contributing to the profits of the water bottle industry - he has a plastic cup filled up from the tap

we ended up having to get a letter from the paediatric incontinence clinic insisting that ds2 be allowed to drink water regularly ...

We always had access to water when I was at school - just that it was those drinking fountains. (I can remember it would draw quite a queue sometimes).
Most people seem to fill up a sports bottle with tap water rather than buy bottled water for school.