Virtual sport sessions for children during school closures

23 Mar 2020 03:25 PM

We've teamed up with the Youth Sport Trust and government to enlist 450 School Games Organisers to help deliver online activity programme.

More than 400 trusted and experienced leaders in school sport and physical activity are being redeployed to provide online activities and digital content for children during school closures.

As the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic continues to grow, School Games Organisers (SGOs) who would normally be helping to put on county, inter and intra-school competitions at this time of year, will now be tasked with helping to keep the nation’s children active.

The Chief Medical Officer’s guidance recommends 60 minutes of activity a day for children, but with schools closed and social distancing measures preventing most organised sport from taking place, extra efforts are needed to maintain activity levels.

That’s why we’ve teamed up with the Youth Sport Trust and the Departments for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, and Health and Social Care, to enlist the 450 SGOs – who will also respond to the needs of schools still providing care to children of key workers.

“Helping our children stay active is going to be more important than ever – for everyone’s physical and mental health,” said our chief executive, Tim Hollingsworth.

“All the research shows that the biggest driver of whether children are active or not, is enjoyment, so this brand new online programme will be built with that in mind.

“We’d encourage parents to build activity into their own routines too, because research shows they are great role models - active parents are more likely to have active children.”

Click here for the full press release