Active 60 and Beyond
Castle Point and Rochford School Sport Partnership (SSP)
As stated by the Chief Medical Officer, children and young people should be taking part in 60 minutes of physical activity per day. Although this has been a strong recommendation, this has not come to fruition for a large proportion of young people, and so the Active 60 and Beyond project provided a supportive approach for schools to make this ambition a reality.
Building on the strong relationships between the schools in Castle Point and Rochford, and the School Sport Partnership at the Deanes School, this partnership has helped raise awareness of the positive impact of physical activity on a young person’s development and attitude at school. Over the year, the SSP have understood the support and resource the local schools need to be able to achieve 60 minutes of physical activity for every pupil.
Extensive research was conducted with Head Teachers, Senior Leaders, Trust Leaders and staff, and concluded that schools required practical support to ensure that principles and models can become practice. The SSP worked closely with all elements of education including Multi Academy Trusts, Local Authority Education Services and stand-alone academy schools to ensure clarity across the sector. The Active Essex Children and Young People team provided knowledge, research and insight expertise to show extensive impact of the project and helped influence school leaders, on the importance of physical activity for students.
Physical activity at school doesn’t just have to be through PE, nor does it have to be competitive. An active school day can be created in many ways, and it was important for the partnership to raise awareness of this. Sharing best practice of how 60 active minutes a day can be achieved, through break time, active learning and movement breaks, helped schools establish key links between regular physical activity and wider physical and mental health outcomes for pupils.
Through discussions and targeted work with each school, action plans were designed and the partnership helped schools to identify inactivity at an early stage. By enabling schools to audit and then action based on need, with increased support and capacity, they have been able to successfully adopt tried and tested infrastructure and methods to influence change in decision-makers from across the education system.
Findings showed that schools want and need:
- Opportunity to use other schools’ facilities that are nearby
- Shared learning across schools, to understand how others implement activity strategies and timetabling support
- An SSP sport apprentice to add more depth into the PE team
- Teacher training for active learning and implementing movement breaks
- More qualified sports teachers for break time and to support school events.
Through the conversations and investigations with schools, despite a broad and varied offer of physical activity, there are still clear cohorts of young people who remain inactive. It was evident that a more holistic view of activity, including school policy is not being considered. This project placed a spotlight on the benefits of physical activity and health outcomes for schools and also provided the much-needed resource to help schools think about future plans.
To build upon this, the partnership was also able to highlight how targeted interventions for young people in areas of deprivation, and struggling with poor mental health, can really make a difference to their overall wellbeing.
There is hope that this project will continue to contribute to long-term health and societal benefits as it focuses on providing children with the opportunity to develop positive relationships with being active and moving more - a key principle of the #MoveWithUs campaign.
