Active Lives: Children and Young People Survey: Attitudes

6 in 10 children and young people in England do not do enough sport and physical activity. This was the main finding from Sport England's first release of the Active Lives Children and Young People Survey results back in December. For the full report please see here: www.sportengland.org/media/13698/active-lives-children-survey-academic-year-17-18.pdf

Today Sport England have released the attitudinal data from the survey which shows:

1) Physically literate children do twice as much activity. The more of the five elements of physical activity that children have, the more active they are. 

2) Enjoyment is a key driver of activity levels, those who strongly agree that they enjoy taking part do 33% more minutes of activity than those who don't. 

3) Physically literate children and young people are happier, more trusting of other children and report higher levels of resilience. 

4) Physical literacy decreases with age. As children grow older, they report lower levels of enjoyment, confidence, competence and understanding. 

5) The results also reveal important inequalities among certain groups of children which must be tackled, these include:

• Girls are less likely to say they enjoy or feel confident about doing sport and physical activity: 58% of boys enjoy it while only 43% of girls enjoy it, 47% of boys feel confident compared to 31% of girls. 
• Children from least affluent families are less likely to enjoy activity than those from the most affluent families, from previous research we also know they are less likely to be active. 
• Black children are more physically literate than other ethnic groups, with boys being more active than girls, but they are less active than the population as a whole. 

The 5 areas and the rating scales are below:

For the full Sport England Report please see the link here: www.sportengland.org/media/13851/active-lives-children-survey-2017-18-attitudes-report.pdf