Physically active children are happier, healthier and achieve more. Tees Valley Sport, working with local partners and school leaders aim to help children and their communities become active by adopting a whole school approach.
Locally, we’ve created the Tees Valley Active Schools project, which was funded by You’ve Got and is completely free for schools to access and use. This is designed to encourage schools to reflect on their provision across the school day and find ways to embed more physical activity into their daily routine.
In Tees Valley we are fully aware that positive physical activity experiences for children and young people can act as the foundations for a long and healthy life. Through influencing the design and delivery of physical activity in educational settings across Tees Valley, we can help our schools to build these vital foundations. By encouraging and enabling schools to embed the principles of the Tees Valley Active Schools Programme, we are confident that we are improving life chances for the children and young people across Tees Valley.
The Tees Valley Active Schools programme aims to normalise movement and supports the governments ‘Everybody active, every day’ framework for physical activity.
‘Everybody active, every day’ is a national, evidence-based approach to support all sectors to embed physical activity into the fabric of daily life and make it an easy, cost-effective and ‘normal’ choice in every community.
The Tees Valley Active Schools Programme has developed the four ‘P’s’ for schools to assess themselves against and use as a tool to develop whole school priorities to support the development of an active school.
Schools taking part in the programme will initially carry out a self-assessment based on the four P’s and their sub-priorities. Each sub-priority will be assessed as ‘emerging’, ‘established’ or ‘embedded’. A school assessing themselves as ‘embedded’ for all sub-priorities will be a fully embedded active school.
Once a school has carried out an initial assessment, schools are encouraged to develop a minimum of three sub-priorities per year. Fully recognising this is a long term approach, changing policies, habits, the environment and behaviours of staff and students in school.
Schools will have the opportunity to track progress through the assessment tool.
Each school is given a digital copy of the Tees Valley Schools guidance to support with the priorities they are focussing on. It’s full of examples of ways that schools have come up with innovative ways to get their school more active.
To find out more about the Tees Valley Active Schools project, please contact the active schools lead in each area.
Tracy Raynor t.raynor@tees.ac.uk – Middlesbrough, Stockton, Hartlepool or Darlington schools
Claire Tennyson claire.tennyson@ressp.co.uk – Redcar & Eston schools
Andy Tennyson andy.tennyson@clevelandssp.co.uk – Cleveland schools
