More than 30 percent of children in England don’t do enough exercise, a new report suggests.
Research compiled by Sport England claims that 1 in 3 kids aren’t active enough. Researchers found that a third of children don’t meet the government’s activity guidelines of 30 minutes of exercise per day. The organisation conducted an online survey, which involved 130,000 children aged between 5 and 16 years old. The findings of the poll indicate that boys are likely to be more active than girls, and children from poorer backgrounds are less likely to meet recommended activity levels than those from more affluent areas. Teens aged 13-16 are the least active group.
Mims Davies, sports minister, described the findings as “simply unacceptable” given that we know that children who are active are likely to be happier and healthier.
Current guidelines suggest that children and young people should be active for a period of at least 60 minutes per day, which should ideally comprise 30 minutes of exercise at school and 30 minutes after school. The 2017/2018 survey shows that just 28 percent of children hit the school time target, with ever fewer (22%) managing 30 minutes of activity after school. Activities include anything that gets the heart pumping, including walking, jogging, playing sports, using a bike or a scooter, dancing and children’s PE and exercise classes.
Despite the worrying findings of the report, there are glimmers of hope thanks to programmes and initiatives like those run by London Youth Rowing. This club is currently working with pupils at Mossbourne Community Academy to help children to learn to row and encourage more young people to take up the sport. One pupil said that the lessons had helped them to deal with stress and also to learn more about themselves. Coach, Oliver James, believes that more needs to be done to create a sporting culture, which means that exercise is seen as something that all young people do.