features
Kids’ fitness: Child’s play
Only half of the UK’s seven-year-olds are currently meeting recommended physical activity guidelines of 60 minutes a day. Kate Cracknell and Jak Phillips take a look at some of the latest initiatives designed to get kids moving
GOPLAYGO
Quick & easy bookings
“Parents want a painless way to arrange their kids’ activities, while providers want to maximise capacity, but no-one’s really cracked it yet,” says Robin Brattel, the founder of multiple tech companies who previously worked alongside World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee.
Brattel therefore turned his attention to this situation and the result is Goplaygo, which launched in June – a booking app that aims to take the pain out of arranging activities for young children.
“It was born out of my frustration at how difficult it was to book activities such as swimming and dancing for my own children,” he explains.
To use the app, parents enter their postcode and are then presented with a selection of activities in their area – which can be filtered according to their child’s age (the app currently caters for children between the ages of zero and six years) and activity preferences – before proceeding to the booking page.
The app, which takes a 10 per cent cut of bookings, caters for all manner of children’s activities and carries out rigorous quality assurances prior to providers being accepted.
“We’re initially launching in the United Kingdom, in north London, but we’ll look to scale up quickly and will probably do a funding round at some point later this year,” adds Brattel.
“We’ve also had significant interest from senior investors in America and we’d like to launch there as soon as possible.
“Ultimately we’ll be aiming for global scalability, with booking options for all ages. Uber and Airbnb started from nothing, so there’s no reason why we shouldn’t think big.”
ENGAGE TO COMPETE
Making the most of your human resources
A new Sport-England funded programme has engaged more than 15,000 school children in regular activity by upskilling lunchtime assistants and other school staff to deliver sessions.
Led by youth activity specialist Fit For Sport, the Engage To Compete programme trained over than 700 school staff in Sandwell and London’s Tower Hamlets to deliver regular physical activity sessions. Lunchtime assistants, teaching assistants, teachers, PE co-ordinators and senior leadership teams were shown how to engage all children in activity and help them achieve the CMO guidelines of 60 minutes of activity a day for every child.
With a focus on lunchtime activity – a key time to get children active – 44 schools across the two regions benefited from training and guidance on how to increase physical activity, develop competition and deliver the Engage To Compete challenge: a set of simple challenges to measure children’s physical literacy and fitness levels including stamina, agility and co-ordination.
As a result of the Engage To Compete programme, the schools reported an improvement in children’s behaviour and concentration levels in class, as well as reductions in staff time spent dealing with incidents from the playground. Children’s activity levels also improved and staff felt more confident to take an active role in playtime. And all this for a cost calculated to be less than £11 per child.
FREE SESSIONS FOR PARENTS & KIDS
FREE sessions for parents & kids
A new offering from Xercise4Less
UK budget operator Xercise4Less kicked off an innovative programme in March of this year, offering free exercise classes across its 35 health clubs in the UK for parents and their children aged between three and five years.
Each site is staging four Xercise4Kids sessions each week, as part of a £1m investment from the budget gym operator into the new scheme.
The new exercise model was developed by Xercise4Kids co-ordinator Sarah Philp, who wanted to provide parents and children with the opportunity to enjoy exercise together and learn new and exciting ways of being physically active.
The 45-minute classes take both the children and parents on a storytelling journey through four different themes, the launch themes being The Underwater Kingdom, Deserted Lands, Jump-Around Jungle and The Exceptional Circus. Each class incorporates four or five different activities that keep the heart rate high and challenge the major muscle groups, with an emphasis on fun.
Every eight weeks, the themes of the classes change to keep the children and parents engaged – and at the end of each eight-week programme, the children are presented with a certificate to document their progress.
“Xercise4Kids was inspired by the lack of inter-generational activity available in the UK,” says Philp. “It eliminates the childcare barrier and encourages interaction between parent and child.”
THE DAILY MILE
Getting kids up & running
The Daily Mile is an initiative designed to get schoolchildren running for 15 minutes every day – they average a mile in this time – in order to improve not only their fitness levels but also their concentration levels, mood, behaviour and general wellbeing.
Children run in their school uniforms, so no kit or changing time is needed, and the whole thing is designed to be non-competitive and fun – there are no winners or losers.
The Daily Mile was first created in February 2012 by Elaine Wyllie, then headteacher of St Ninians primary school in Stirling. And the results have been impressive: by September 2012, the whole school was running for 15 minutes each day and not one of the 57 Primary 1 children was deemed overweight by the school nurse.
Wyllie has now retired from teaching to dedicate herself to introducing The Daily Mile to schools across the United Kingdom; there are already hundreds of schools in England and Scotland that have signed up to the scheme.
And its impact may even be felt beyond primary schools, with the SNP (Scottish National Party) announcing in its manifesto in April that it would encourage secondary schools and universities to take part if it wins another term in government; there are even discussions about it being introduced into hospitals, for NHS staff.
ALCIS
A success story in Europe
One in five European children are either overweight or obese, fewer than 10 per cent meet WHO recommendations on physical activity, and children only spend 5 per cent of their school time in physical activities. The objective of the Active Learning for Children in Schools (ALCIS) project is therefore to develop higher awareness of the importance of schoolchildren adopting healthy lifestyles and regular physical activity.
In September 2015, as part of the European Week of Sport, an ALCIS pilot project ran in the UK, Italy, Netherlands, Ireland and Lithuania, with over 8,000 children across 84 schools taking part. Fitness trainers led fun group exercise classes, complemented by a learning programme run over four weeks with educational materials specially developed for the project.
It proved very successful, with both teachers and children saying it had had a positive effect on their learning, as well as their thought processes regarding their lifestyle: nutrition, physical activity, stress management and more. In addition, 80 per cent of the children who took part (all were aged 10–12 years) reported increased levels of activity as a result of ALCIS.
The European Commission has now supported a second ALCIS project to be re-run in the original countries, and in 2016 with the addition of Sweden, the Czech Republic, Poland and Spain. This second project will also feature a pilot intervention with refugee children living in Brussels. EuropeActive will co-ordinate the project, which is due to reach 14,000+ children this year.
BORN TO MOVE
‘Better results than PE’
Structured fitness programmes have the potential to help children become more physically active, stronger and more agile than conventional PE lessons taught in schools, according to the results of a new pilot study.
Researchers at Edge Hill University in the UK looked at the impact of twice weekly Les Mills-designed Born To Move (BTM) sessions on 10- and 11-year-olds compared to regular PE classes. BTM is a series of movement-based classes, with music and choreography designed to meet the unique needs of each childhood developmental stage.
The six-week study involved 139 children from four schools in the UK and found that those who took part in BTM developed greater muscular fitness, intrinsic motivation and general physical activity levels than the control group, which did only normal PE.
On average, the BTM group improved push-up test performance from 5.7 to 11.7, as well as increasing standing long-jump distance from 130.2cm to 145.0cm; there were also positive outcomes in terms of length of time spent active and engagement with exercise.
“The BTM classes are designed to captivate toddlers through to teens by combining a motivating mix of age-appropriate movement and music that’s jam-packed with laughter, singing and fun,” said Janine Phillips, the creative director behind the BTM concept.
“They allow children to discover the joy of movement and set them up with healthy habits for the future.”
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