Access to good facilities can be a huge barrier for children and young people to take part in physical activity and sport. To address that, the Opening School Facilities (OSF) programme supported schools across the country to open-up their facilities, including swimming pools, by partnering up with local sporting, youth and community organisations to improve physical activity levels and participation in their area.
Following the end of the academic year, the final report for the OSF programme has been published, demonstrating its incredible success.
The report confirms that the programme smashed all targets originally set, with 251,543 pupils and 93,264 members of the local community taking part in 189,071 activity sessions in 1,580 schools. Through the programme, children and young people took part in activities on a combined total of 3.2 million occasions.
As part of that, we’re proud to have distributed £2,620,860 worth of funding and supported 87 schools across Northumberland and Tyne & Wear, targeting those areas and schools that needed it most.
Dan Gray, our OSF project manager, says that the funding has made such a significant impact on the levels of physical activity to many children, young people and families across our region. “It’s really clear to see that the voice of children and young people has been listened to and the projects that have been delivered are really focused around the needs and addressing the challenges that the schools and local communities face,” he says.
“The OSF funding has done such a fantastic job at breaking down many barriers to physical activity which children, young people and families now get the opportunity to access in ways that they’ve never been able to access before.”
Feedback from the schools involved has been incredibly positive
“When we found out about the funding we saw it as a really good opportunity to provide our students with a lot more opportunities and a lot more of what they wanted,” says Liam Rochford, assistant headteacher at Jarrow School.
“The thing that’s had the biggest impact across the school is most definitely the VR club and that came from the student voice. It was their suggestion that if we had these VR headsets they could play computer games but get fit at the same time.”
“The OSF funding as had such a positive impact on our pupils’ physical activity levels and it’s opened up so many more opportunities for them,” says Ruth Jobey, head teacher at Battle Hill Primary School.
Find out more
Read our impact report for the full story.
For more information on our OSF programme, please contact Dan Gray: [email protected]
Youth Sport Trust has a toolkit to support schools in unlocking the potential of their facilities, making them available for community use and driving positive change.
Find out about our other children and young people work.
Can you help us?
Following us on social media and sharing our posts and newsletter helps us reach more people who need our support.