Sport in our schools: Football tops extra-curricular table as dance makes a move

FIGURES collected by Sport Scotland have shown the top 20 extra-curricular sporting activities carried out by school children in the country’s state sector. The figures reveal that football retains its longstanding dominance and that other team sports also remain popular, but it also highlights the growing popularity of non-traditional activities, particularly among girls.

Ongoing monitoring by Sport Scotland’s Active Schools Network has produced results for the 2010-11 academic year from every local authority in the country. The totals shown are for “participant sessions” rather than the actual number of children engaged in each activity, and the sessions occurred before or after school or at lunchtime, with the involvement of members of the Network.

Curriculum activity which is part of the normal school week have not been included, nor have activities such as mini-rugby, which tend to be run by clubs. But, as concern continues to grow about the rapid rise in obesity among the young, the top 20 nonetheless highlights which activities are currently most successful in helping children from Primary One to Senior Six to stay active.

With participant sessions for the year coming close to one million, football’s total is more than double that of the second most popular activity, dance and movement. Basketball and netball are very close together in third and fourth places, rugby is fifth, athletics sixth and badminton seventh.

In total, traditional competitive sports account for 14 of the top 20. Of the other six, dance and movement is by far the most popular, with a number of sessions more than double that of multisport, a term used for a block of sessions in which mainly primary-school pupils are introduced to a range of sports. Fitness, activity clubs, playground activities and cheerleading are the other non-traditional sports which make it into the top 20.

Dawn McAuley, one of Sport Scotland’s lead managers, explained that the figures did not pretend to offer a panoramic picture of sporting activity within our schools. Instead, it showed how children were responding to the range of activities on offer to them.

“We gather the information every term, through our Active Schools co-ordinators,” she said. “Every state school in every local authority has access to a co-ordinator, and these co-ordinators have logged the participant sessions either before school, at lunchtime or after school.”

Factors such as staff illness mean it’s difficult to get statistics from absolutely 100 per cent of sessions over the course of the academic year but, as far as possible, Sport Scotland has included the numbers from every session. The key thing is these sessions were supported by Active Schools co-ordinators.

They have not included independent schools in the figures, and don’t pick up information from clubs, so it’s not the whole picture, and the statistics do not reflect the very useful partnerships that often exist between governing bodies and other organisations, such as clubs and local authorities.

“But the information does show the wide range of activities offered to school pupils all the way from Primary One to sixth year at secondary level,” says McAuley. “And we hope that the activities offered give children the chance to continue with sport throughout their schools careers and beyond.”

This support across the age range is especially important given the steep drop-off in participation which has been identified in the teenage years, particularly among girls. The availability of activities such as dance and fitness is seen as a particularly important part of the attempt to encourage adolescent girls to remain active in sport.

“Seventy-two per cent of the sessions were delivered by volunteers, which shows how important they are,” McAuley added. “And all of our co-ordinators consult with the children they’re working with to ensure they’re offering activities which appeal to the children.”

The same mix of traditional sports and newer activities is in evidence just outside the top 20. The absence of cricket from the published list is partly a reflection of the fact that the data was collected over the course of the school year, and not during the summer holidays.

Of the non-traditional activities which are not in the top 20, dodgeball is one of the most popular, awareness of it having been boosted by the 2004 film starring Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn.