Children’s activity levels remain stable but significant and sustained action required

5 Dec 2024 01:32 PM

The legacy of Covid-19 means more must be done to give young people the best possible chance in life

Children and young people’s activity levels have been maintained and remained stable across the 2023-24 academic year. 

Our latest Active Lives Children and Young People Survey Report, which we’ve published today, shows that 47.8% of children are meeting the Chief Medical Officers’ guidelines of taking part in an average of 60 minutes or more of sport and physical activity every day.

Today’s report demonstrates the long-term impact of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic on children and young people’s relationship with sport and physical activity.  

Children who were in nursery to school Year 4 (ages 4-9) when the pandemic struck in 2020 have been particularly disadvantaged. 

This age group, in school Years 3-8 (ages 7-13) during this report’s timeframe, remain less likely to have positive attitudes towards activity and have a lower sense of opportunity.  

Children in school Years 3-6 have seen the largest drops in those reporting three or more positive attitudes, down 4.9% compared to children of the same age during the 2017-18 academic year. Children in Years 7-8 have also seen a long-term drop (down 3.1%), whereas older children have seen a small increase over the same period. 

Happiness scores are also down across those in Years 3-8, while the largest drops since the 2017-18 academic year in individual development (those who ‘keep trying’ when they find something hard) are seen for those in school Years 5-6 and 7-8 (down 6.9% and 7.0% respectively, compared to when older children were that age six years ago). 

Furthermore, our report has found that children in school Year 7 are less likely to be able to swim 25 metres unaided (70% can) than older children could at this age (77% of children in school Year 11 in 2023-24 could when they were in school Year 7 in 2017-18).  

If this group don't catch up, there could be a generation of children who don't learn this important life skill and, subsequently, may be less likely to introduce their own children to swimming in adult life.  

Inequalities remain

Today’s findings reinforce that participation in sport and physical activity varies greatly among different demographic groups.  

Significant inequalities remain in activity levels, with Black (42%) and Asian (43%) children and young people, and those from the least affluent families (45%), still less likely to play sport or be physically active than the average across all ethnicities and affluence groups. Girls (45%) are also less likely to be active than boys (51%). 

Even more significantly, those with two or more characteristics of inequality, for example Asian girls, or someone less affluent from a Black background, are significantly less likely to be active than their peers with no characteristics of inequality at all.  

Types of activities

Our report also outlines the types of activity being undertaken by children and young people, and how this varies by age group.  

For example, active travel (83% having taken part at least once in the last week) and active play and informal activity (81%) are most common for children in school Years 1-2 (ages 5-7), while team sports become more common as children get older (with 57% of children in Years 7-11, aged 11-16, taking part in a team sport at least once in the last week, compared to 40% in Years 1-2).

Download the report : Active Lives Children and Young People Survey - academic year 2023-24 report

What else is in the report?

Today’s latest Active Lives Survey Report offers enormous insight into the activity habits of children and young people in England.  

Download the full report to explore levels of activity for different demographic groups and discover how a child’s gender, ethnicity, family affluence, whether they have disabilities or long-term health conditions impacts how likely they are to be physically active – you can also explore how this changes as they get older.  

Today’s report also has a deep dive into volunteering, with rates remaining unchanged compared to 12 months ago, suggesting they might be settling at a lower level than pre-pandemic.

There remains 6.9%, or 234,000 fewer children and young people volunteering compared to six years ago (academic year 2017-18). 

There's also a section on wellbeing, individual and community development, looking at the wider outcomes for children and young people, both overall and linked to their levels of engagement in sport and physical activity. 

Measures covered are mental wellbeing, individual development and social and community development. 

It demonstrates how active children are more likely to be happier, have higher self-esteem and be more trusting than inactive children. 

There's been a significant drop in happiness for both boys (down to 7.2 out of 10 from 7.4 in 2017/18) and girls (down to 6.7 out of 10 from 7.1) from where they were before the pandemic.  

The report also looks at children’s attitudes towards sport and physical activity.

This section shows how many children report finding sport easy, are confident at being active, understand why it's good for them and how they can get involved as well as enjoying taking part.

Just over a third of children and young people report three or more positive attitudes, while under half of secondary-age young people feel they have the opportunity to be active. 

Finally, the report’s publicly available data tables underline the importance of place, as activity levels vary significantly across the country. 

How we're making a difference

Children and young people are a key focus of our long-term strategy, Uniting the Movement, and are central to our work through our partnerships, investment in places, our Movement Fund and campaigns.   

We believe physical activity is central to happy and healthy lives, and positive experiences at an early age help build the foundations for an active life.  

Since March 2022, we’ve invested more than £600 million in more than 130 long-term partnerships, showing our recognition of the important role our partners play in creating positive experiences for young people, whether as a participant, leader, coach or volunteer. 

These partners include national governing bodies of sport, Youth Sport Trust, UK Youth Active Partnerships, Street Games and the School Games Organiser (SGO) network. 

This network is made up of a workforce of 450 individuals and supports 2.2 million participation opportunities for children, including 28,000 competitive school sport events. 

We’re also investing £250m of National Lottery and Exchequer funding into our place-based work.  

This investment, which builds on the learnings from our local delivery pilots, is targeted. 

Furthermore, sustained community engagement and listening to the voice of local children and young people, is leading to interventions that have greater local ownership and sustainability. 

These projects have also focussed in on accessibility, enjoyment and the needs of the local young people. Examples of this work include:  

  • In Pennine Lancashire, direct engagement and collaboration with the Muslim community has seen more than 5,000 young people increase their daily activity levels through the Active Madrassah programme.  
  • In Bedford, a partnership with the local housing association and Be Active Beds has enabled girls aged between five and 12 years to get active by taking part in free swimming lessons. The girls, who hadn’t had access to swimming lessons previously – for various reasons, including financial and cultural barriers – were able to access the lessons for free and were given the opportunity to gain potentially life-saving skills.  
  • Through our Place work in Cranbrook, they’ve opened a brand-new pump track in their country park. Popular with residents of all ages, the track is helping young children to engage in physical activity, while also giving them a sense of community and getting active being fun.   

Last year, we also worked with our partners to develop a Physical Literacy Consensus Statement for England. 

It helps us understand that our relationship with sport and activity changes over our lifetime and how the experiences we have and our opportunities to be active impact how likely we are to take part. 

On the back of this work, we have launched the Positive Experiences Programme, which connects, convenes and supports partners to consider how to apply physical literacy in practice 

This work ties in with Play Their Way, a coaching campaign we’ve invested £4m in that encourages coaches to prioritise enjoyment and listen to what children want, that launched in 2023. 

A collaboration between 16 partner organisations, the campaign aims to work with England’s 2.6m coaches to build a grassroots movement aimed at increasing and improving child-first coaching in communities across the nation. 

It’s hoped that by putting the child first, it will help them enjoy being active their own way and allow great coaching to inspire children into staying active for life. 

So far, 89% of coaches who have encountered the campaign say they’ve reflected on their own coaching practices after reading campaign material.  

We’ve also invested £1.5m into Studio You, a ‘Netflix’-style digital platform designed to help PE teachers engage the least active girls through non-traditional online activity sessions, such as dance, combat and yoga.  

Launched in 2021, the platform is free to all secondary schools and almost half of them in England (60%) have signed up so far, and it’s estimated Studio You has already reached more than 164,000 teenage girls. 

What's next?

Our next Active Lives Adult Survey report will be published on Thursday 24 April 2025. 

It’ll cover the period from November 2023 to November 2024 and will give a detailed breakdown of overall activity levels, types of activities undertaken and demographic variations in England during this period.