Promoting physicial activity in schools

If we want to improve the health of our country, we should start with our children. With the NHS under historic levels of pressure, and demographics only set to make it harder to meet these, we need to do everything we can to ensure that the next generation is as healthy as it possibly can be.

This means increasing and promoting physical activity in schools and reducing childhood obesity rates in the UK.

We know that targeted interventions aimed at increasing physical activity in schools lead to a significant fall in BMI scores among children, and that physical activity has cumulative benefits - from helping to prevent obesity in later life to an increase in GCSE scores.

We are calling for a whole systems approach to recognising the benefits and importance of physical activity in schools, with the involvement of organisations including Ofsted, The Department for Culture, Media and Sport as well as schools themselves.

Improving levels of physical activity in schools isn’t a silver bullet, and we cannot pretend that there will not be far more work to do. But, as we consider how to ensure the next generation is happier and healthier than those before it, this must be one of the tools which we seek to use.