The crucial point of the
School Sport Survey is to give pupils a voice on sport. We all know that this voice is essential in
providing the insight we need to make improvements.
Surely it’s only right then
that pupils should remain involved in the process after results have been
published?
Here Young Ambassador,
Lauren Holmes, gives her view on why Young Ambassadors, School Councils and
pupils in general need to remain involved in making the results matter (and we won’t be arguing with her)….
My name is Lauren Holmes, I am from Conwy in North
Wales where I go to sixth form at Bryn Elian. This year Bryn Elian received
great news regarding the results of the School Sport Survey; with 79% of their
pupils reported to be hooked on sport.
In past years the results have never really been
shown in a lot of detail to pupils but this year we decided to do something a
bit different in the hope that we can push that figure up even further.
I think Bryn Elian and many
other schools across the area found themselves celebrating an increase in their
School Sport Survey results thanks to dedicated members of PE staff and people
like Huw Evans (from Conwy County Borough Council) who work to help every secondary
school in Conwy improve PE and extracurricular sport (he’s the equivalent of a 5x60
officer for everyone else).
Obviously it’s great that
these guys are making such good improvements, but Huw and the team up here
recognised that even more could be done if they kept us (the pupils and YAs)
involved in the process. After all, it
is our ideas and thoughts that are being used!
So they decided to take all
of the Young Ambassadors from each school in the area to an outdoor activities
center for the day. In the morning we
all completed team building exercises such as radio orienteering and another exercise
(which was the best in my opinion) where we got into pairs with someone we
wouldn’t necessarily talk to and one person would be blind folded before going
through an obstacle course directed by their partner.
The afternoon was then
about the School Sports Survey. We
looked at the results as a group of Young Ambassadors and we then came up with
all the good points, all the bad points and how we could improve them and most
importantly whether it was possible to improve them! The Action plan on the Sport
Wales webpage will help you to do this if you want to follow our lead.
It was important that we
did this with the Young Ambassadors from all the years (7-13) because the role
of the YA as many will know is to inspire, encourage and help pupils to achieve
more through sports. The School Sport Survey helps the staff involved to see
how effective this is in their schools which is why I feel this is so important
to share with the pupils!
We recently had a Young
Ambassador Welsh Steering group meeting in Cardiff and this topic was shared in
depth, we came up with a possible solution to help make the survey more popular
and useful to schools and ultimately get more children hooked on sport for life,
which is the main goal. We found that once the results are published it stays
with the Staff and is hardly ever shared with pupils or YA’s other than on a
nice display board. We encourage everyone to look and reflect upon the results!
It’s quite simple to adopt a
similar approach to Conwy. If you are interested you could send me an email at laurenetholmes@gmail.com with any questions or you
could take a look at the list of ideas we as a steering group came up with:
1. Share results in a meeting
in school
2. Post the results on social
media and encourage comments etc.
3. Go into assemblies and talk
about the results
4. Use PE lessons to your
advantage
5. Come up with a competition
related to an area the results highlighted as not as strong and try and
encourage improvement in that area
6. Get your Young Ambassadors
and Sport Leaders to advertise
7. Speak to your Young
Ambassadors as they know a lot about what pupils want and need
8. Come up with innovative
ways to look at the results
I am looking forward to see
what you all come up with!
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