Children’s activity levels in Greater Manchester recover beyond pre-pandemic levels

By GreaterSport | 08 December 2022 | TAGS: Children and young people, Active Lives, Research and learning

Sport England have today released their Active Lives Children and Young People data. This survey provides the most comprehensive overview of the sport and physical activity habits of children, aged 5 - 16 in England.

Today’s announcement covers the academic year Sept 21 – July 22 this period represents relative normality following the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, however, individual- and class-level disruption through self-isolation and sickness absence was still present.

It shows that 49.3% of children & young people are active for at least 60 minutes a day in Greater Manchester, which equates to 201,300. This means that 207,400 children are not meeting the recommended guidelines of 60 minutes a day.

These numbers show a 7.5% increase in active children from the survey 12 months ago and a 4.1% increase from the academic year Sept 18 – July 19.

This equates to 24,600 more children and young people meeting the Chief Medical Officer’s guidelines than before the pandemic began, and 33,300 more than 12 months ago.

GreaterSport will provide more detail of the results at a Greater Manchester level when they've had chance to fully analyse the data. 

Update: February 2022

Further information for Greater Manchester on the latest Active Lives data release is available here.

From the data, we see that nearly one in two (49.3%) children and young people in Greater Manchester are active (meeting Chief Medical Officer's (CMO) guidelines of 60 minutes of moderate physical activity a day). 

This is above the national average of 47.2%

Activity levels amongst children in secondary school (years 7-8 and 9-11) are above pre-pandemic for the first time, as are girls' with boys' also showing positive signs of recovery. 

Those who identify as Asian are the only ethnicity not to have activity levels recover to pre-pandemic levels, but, by ethnicity, boys' activity levels have also not recovered for those who identify as Black or Mixed.

There's been an increase in activity rates across all family affluence groups and the physical activity gap between the least and most affluent is closing.