The government’s Childhood Obesity Strategy came about after the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health revealed that in some parts of the country 40 percent of children were diagnosed as overweight or obese.

As a result, the Strategy required all primary schools to provide 30 minutes of physical activity on a daily basis in addition to the 2 hours of PE.  However, two problems then arose: one was how to fund it, and the other was how to arrange these 30 minutes of physical activity .

Fortunately, since the announcement of the new strategy solutions have been found to both issues.  In terms of the funding, new money is being provided.  This funding is provided jointly by the Departments for Education, Health and Culture, Media and Sport, and is allocated to primary school headteachers. The funding is ring-fenced and therefore can only be spent on improving the quality of physical activity provisions in schools.

Use the calculations below to work out your school’s allocation:

Schools with 16 or fewer eligible pupils receive £1,000 per pupil

Schools with 17 or more pupils receive £16,000, plus an additional payment of £10 per pupil

Example: a Primary School with 250 children receives £18,500 this academic year.

As for the additional activity, there are a growing range of resources that can be used in class, as part of each lesson.  In all this means that children don’t have to go outside or have specialist PE activities each day; the funding can instead be used to provide resources to use in the class as part of their lessons.

The government has also now issued its “Definition of Physical Activity, Physical Education and School Sport” poster which again confirmed that it was not expecting the new activity to be of the traditional PE type.  The provision can come through activity in the classroom.

This confirms that activities within lessons are to be counted as physical activity and that the funding for PE and Sport can be used to fund resources that incorporate this and allow schools to meet the 30 minutes a day target.

It is with this in mind that imoves developed its “Active Learning” series which can work in all lessons.  You can see how it works, find all the details, and have a free trial of some of the lessons via our website, where you will also find many more details of our work.

If you have any questions please either phone 0114 2661061 or email enquiries@imoves.com.

Ian Pickles