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.
The Active Lives Children and Young People Survey, carried out nationally throughout the school year, asks children aged between five and 16 years old about how much physical activity they take part in, both in and out of school.
The 2021-22 Results showed that:
Although on average national activity levels have returned to those seen pre-pandemic (48%), there are still many groups that vary from this trend.
4,451 children and young people responded to the survey in Sussex in 2021-22. This is lower than pre-pandemic figures. Around 80 schools are randomly selected each term to complete the survey. Schools which complete the survey receive a bespoke report with a breakdown of activity levels in their school, £100 of sports equipment, and are eligible to receive a Healthy Schools Rating.
Not all schools are asked to complete the survey, and some that are encouraged to do so do not prioritise the survey. This leads to very small sample sizes in the data, and responses are not entirely representative. In some local authorities, there is no data collected. This makes it impossible to compare changes at a local level, and over several years.
The Chief Medical Officer’s guidelines count children doing an average of 60+ minutes of activity a day across the week as ‘Active’. Those who do an average of between 30 and 59 minutes a day are counted as ‘Fairly active’ and children doing less than 30 minutes a day on average across the week are counted as ‘Less active’.
Unfortunately the Covid-19 pandemic interrupted survey collection in academic years 2019-20 and 2020-21 so local data is not always available for these years.
We have analysed the available local and national data to better help you understand the trends. This has been presented in a report that includes the adult findings. The Children and Young People section starts on page 45. Please find it here.
If you would like to read Sport England’s detailed national report, please find it here.
Watch our video for an overview of the 2020-21 results in Sussex.
The proportion of children in each activity bracket is shown below. The short black bars indicate the confidence intervals for each result, ie where the ‘true’ rate is likely to lie between. Smaller sample sizes mean wider confidence intervals.
Government guidelines say that children and young people should get 30 minutes of their daily physical activity at school and 30 minutes outside of school. Only 47% of children and young people in Sussex are active for on average 30 minutes per day at school in Sussex.
56% of children and young people in Sussex are active on average for 30 minutes per day outside of school. This equal to the national average.
41.6% of children and young people in Sussex are active for less than 30 minutes on average per day outside of schools. This is similar to the national average of 42.8%.
Years 1-2 were reported to be the most active outside of school. Secondary school students have higher reported inactivity outside of school than primary school students.
Half of primary school children in Sussex were active every day, or active across the week. This was slightly higher than the average for the South East. One in four primary school children were active for less than 30 minutes per day on average.
44% of secondary school students in Sussex were active every day, or active across the week. Again this was slightly higher than the average for the South East, but there does seem to be a fall in activity between primary and secondary school. One in three secondary school students were active for less than an average of 30 minutes a day.
Mac is responsible for analysing activity data to provide Active Sussex and partners with the insight needed to help people become more active.
Mac will 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.
Email: macince@activesussex.org