The Active Lives Children and Young People Survey, carried out nationally throughout the school year, asks children aged between 5 and 16 years old about how much physical activity they take part in, both in and out of school.
Sport England has revealed the results from its Active Lives Children and Young People Survey for the academic year 2024/25.
The findings have been captured in the report include:
The survey highlighted the fact that in England only 49.1 per cent of children are getting enough exercise. This is as per the Chief Medical Officers’ guidelines of taking part in an average of 60 minutes or more of sport and physical activity a day.
Despite this figure being lower than is hoped for, it is higher than all previous figures.
The Story in Sussex is a little more positive. The percentage of Children and Young People that are active is 52.1%. An increase since last year’s 48.2%, and also Sussex’s highest levels since the survey started in 2017.
As ever, the survey and the data that has been collected does reinforce that participation in sport and physical activity varies greatly. Experiences and opportunities are impacted depending on their gender, ethnicity, family affluence, and what physical and social barriers are in their way.
Inequalities
Significant inequalities remain in activity levels, with Children and Young People from Black and Asian communities more likely to both be around 40.7% and 43.2% respectively. Boys (52.3%) remain more likely to be physically active than girls (46.4%). And even less active are those who mark their gender – “In another way” 39.1%. With the lowest Active rates from all characteristics.
Those from low affluence families are the less likely to be active (44.9%). This is across all ethnicities, genders and abilities. So the intersectional realities for the next generation are compounded by poverty.
As mentioned in the report by Nick Pontefract, Chief Strategy Officer, “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. This is why Sport England’s 10-year strategy, Uniting the Movement, is unashamedly focused on addressing those inequalities.“
Mental wellbeing
There’s a well documented positive association between levels of engagement in sport and physical activity and levels of mental wellbeing. This year’s survey adds more data to evidence the correlation.
Mental wellbeing (happiness measure in the data) scores are higher for those who are active than those who are fairly active, which in turn are higher than for those who are less active. There’s also a positive association between all mental wellbeing measures and volunteering to support sport and physical activity.
Happiness scores remain unchanged over the last two years, at 6.9 out of 10, having fallen by 0.26 points compared to six years ago (academic year 2017-18).
Volunteering
2.2 million (47%) children and young people volunteered to support sport and physical activity in the last 12 months. This is lower than 54% recorded in academic year 2017-18. Volunteering rates remain unchanged compared to 12 months ago, suggesting they might be settling at a lower level than pre-pandemic. There are 6.9%, or 71,000 fewer children and young people volunteering compared to six years ago (academic year 2017-18).
Active travel
Levels of active travel continue to increase, and remain high following the pandemic. There are now 12.4% or 1.1 million more children and young people travelling by active means than six years ago (academic year 2017-18).
Cost-of-living
The cost-of-living is still impacting children and young people’s relationship with sport and physical activity.
In February of 2024, Sport England’s Activity Check-in revealed almost one in five parents/carers said they were using free activities for their children to socialise with friends instead of paid, while 12 per cent said they’d reduced the regularity of paid activities.
This recent report builds on these areas of concern. Children and young people from the least affluent families are the least likely to be active, with only 45 per cent meeting the Chief Medical Officers’ guidelines – compared to 57 per cent of those from the most affluent families.
This highlights how important it is to develop the New National Youth Strategy to break down barriers to opportunity for young people. Where a commitment to more than £85 million will be allocated in recognition of the urgent need for more youth facilities. This will include £26 million of new funding for youth clubs to buy new equipment and undertake much needed renovations via the Better Youth Spaces programme.
Active Lives asks lots of questions. We could create a massive report that attempts to cover many of these. If you are interested in what insight can be found in your local area around a specific issue, group or activity, please get in touch with our Insight Officer, Mac Ince. Further to what’s presented here, there is data on the following:
• Activity Data
covers the different sports and activities available from the Active Lives survey. Participation rates show whether Children and Young People have taken part anywhere in the last week, during school hours, outside of school hours and then either indoors and outdoors (outside of school hours). Overall levels of activity, swimming capability, swimming confidence, volunteering, spectating, mental well-being and outcome measures can also be reviewed using this section of the tool.
• Attitudes Data
provides findings for attitudes towards sport and physical activity. The attitudes measured include enjoyment, confidence, competence, understanding and knowledge. These five attitudes are used to measure physical literacy.
Data can also be broken down by the numbers of positive attitudes present, enabling physical literacy analysis too.
If there is a big enough sample size, the data above is available at a Local Authority level.
If you are interested in finding out more about how your area compares to the rest of England, you can use the new smaller area estimates.
Nationally there’s been an overall improvement on last year’s activity levels, but some groups still face significant inequalities.
Read more about these groups in this report.
If you have any questions about using data or insight within what you do, speak to Mac to see if he can help.
Mac is responsible for analysing activity data to provide Active Sussex and partners with the insight needed to help people become more active.
He keeps up-to-date with all publicly available data sets and reports, that bring out that useful insight.
Mac works across all teams at Active Sussex, and work closely with the Marketing and Communications officer to ensure effective communication of strategic messages around physical inactivity through case studies and reports, as well as sharing impact and learning with external stakeholders.
He is also responsible for Active Sussex’s GDPR compliance policies. So if you are worried about Data Protection, drop him a line, and he'll do his best to help you.
Email: macince@activesussex.org