A Journey of Success

Education is a life changing experience that affects people on many levels, but often these changes are not visible. One of Rashid School’s aims is to educate our students to make good, informed and healthy decisions regarding lifestyle, exercise and diet. It is tremendously rewarding when we actually see the visible results and success in some of our student’s progress.

One such student who has made incredible progress and achieved remarkable results through hard work, dedication and sweat, has been Ahmed Bin Qetami in yr10. When Ahmed arrived in the secondary school in year 7, he would be the first to admit that he was overweight and unfit. In PE Ahmed struggled to compete with other boys because he was just not physically fit enough to perform at the level he would have liked. This was de-motivating and resulted in mixed effort and results in class. This continued into yr 8 where Ahmed put on more weight and his fitness scores dropped to all time lows of 2.4 on the Beep Test. By the beginning of yr 9 Ahmed had a BMI of 31.7, which is classed as clinically obese and he was at his heaviest ever.

It was around this time Ahmed made the decision to change his life. He started going to the gym with his friends after school and become interested in fitness and training methods. Ahmed began by using the stationary bike and cross-trainer for small periods of time. As the weeks went on, the time he could spend on these machines increased and his weight began to drop off. At this point Ahmed became more motivated and started to watch his diet and cut back on junk food and fizzy drinks. More improvement followed.

The results have been amazing, not only physically, but also personally. Talk to Ahmed now and you can sense the increase in self-confidence and inner happiness with his accomplishment.

To date, Ahmed has lost a whopping 22kg! His BMI as dropped into a healthy and normal range of 23.1 and he is now one of the fittest students in his year group with a Beep Test score of 10.0!

Ahmed should be truly proud of his achievement and is a positive role model to many of his peers. He has not only improved his health, body image, self-confidence and over all wellbeing, but also changed the direction of his life for the better. Ahmed is furthering his education in this area by opting to do GCSE Physical Education and is on his way to greater understanding of the how’s and why’s of health.

Well done. Ahmed is certainly an inspiration and hopefully his success has given hope and motivation for others to follow in his footsteps.


 Below: Ahmed has improved his health and fitness