Active at School

Schools have a large role to play in helping children to be active during the school day.

Schools have a fundamental role to play in helping equip children with the knowledge they need to make healthy choices for themselves, and in creating a healthy environment for children to learn and play.

Children and young people (5-18 years old) should take part in appropriate physical activity for at least 60 minutes per day, every day of the week. These activities should make young people breathe faster and will help develop movement skills and increase muscle and bone strength.

Children and Young People with a Disability (5-18 years old) should aim to be active for 20 minutes per day, every day of the week. Do challenging but manageable strength and balance activities 3 times a week.

Schools provide the ideal setting to ensure they reach their activity target.

    • 30 minutes of their daily target can and should be achieved at school.
    • Why not use active travel as a way to add to your child's daily movement

Your local school programmes

There are local programmes specfically for schools across Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland that are open for your school to be involved in - not sure if they are? Check with the PE Teacher at your school to find out...

There are also a variety of school programmes in place to ensure that young people with a disability are included within curriculum PE and are accessing additional opportunities such as the School Games and Daily Boost.

The Daily Boost aims to encourage children and young people at all schools and early years settings to do 15 minutes of organised activity at school every day. Children and young people could walk, run, skip, hop or jump around a set lap or loop at school. Or simply do their favourite sport or activity that gets them active – dancing, cycling, scooting, anything!

The School Games is part of the national 'School Games Programme' and aims to keep competitive sport at the heart of schools and provide more young people with the opportunity to compete and achieve their personal best. It is open to all young people aged 6-18 years, of all abilities and backgrounds.

Team Leicestershire is the umbrella association for the traditional competitive school sport offer across Leicestershire, Leicester City and Rutland. It is open to every secondary school – both state and independent, and aims to ensure that as many young people as possible have the opportunity to participate in competitive school sport.


PE, School Sport and Physical Activity

Physical Education (PE) is about what takes place in school curriculum timetabled time and which is delivered to all pupils. This involves both 'learning to move' (i.e. becoming more physically competent) and 'moving to learn'.

School Sport is the structured learning that takes place beyond the curriculum. This is sometimes referred to as out-of-school-hours learning. Again, the context for the learning is physical activity.

Physical Activity is a broad term referring to all bodily movement that uses energy. It includes all forms of physical education, sports and dance activities.

At Active Together we are committed to and are working in partnership with Schools, School Sport & Physical Activity Networks (SSPANs) and partners to ensure that all of our young people have access to a variety of opportunities in PE, school sport and physical activity and improve their health and wellbeing.

We are supporting schools with their PE, School Sport and Physical activity offer through our Active Schools work.