What is Adopt
a School?
Adopt a School is an exciting community programme brought to you by the Fitness
Industry Association. It is government funded and:
- Links FIA member health clubs/leisure centres
with one or more local primary schools.
- Targets children aged 10/11 in the final year
of primary school.
- Includes an activity pack on how to run the programme.
- Provides a minimum six weeks of inspirational
activity for children using experienced instructors.
- Provides advice on the benefits of leading a
healthy lifestyle.
- Takes place within each school term.
Adopt a school is a fantastic way of introducing
primary school children into activity and providing
opportunities for them to sustain these levels after
they have finished their programme.
By using experienced instructors, a different set
of children per term can experience new activities
away from the sports that are offered at school in
traditional PE lessons.
Objectives
Adopt a School is an entirely government funded programme
and consequently has to achieve specific objectives.
The FIA has to show Sport England that through
school club links, we can impact positively on children's
activity levels. To keep you in the picture, here are
the measured objectives that the programme has to meet:-
- Getting children active
- Keeping children active
- To provide high quality activity experiences
- To develop school club links
- To demonstrate the positive health and lifestyle
changes that activity promotes
- To provide clubs with tools, information and
guidelines to successfully develop children's clubs
and activities as a vehicle for sustaining activity
levels
At the end of each term and at the end of each year,
we will be evaluating all programmes to ascertain
whether we are meeting these objectives.
Programme Framework
- All programmes must have a qualified
instructor delivering the activity to the children
for the minimum six week period. Programmes can
start at any point during the term as long as
the minimum six week programme can be completed.
Six weeks
is necessary to give the children the chance to experience
different sorts of activity, get them into good habits
and give
enough chance to educate them about the importance of
leading a healthy lifestyle.
- Exit routes need to be offered following
the completion of the programme.
Offering some form of continuous activity is a very
important part of keeping the children active on
a long term basis. Following the programme, the children
should be able to link directly into after school
clubs or junior membership programmes supported by
the clubs. - Provision of exit routes (opportunities
once the programme is completed) is key to ensuring
the long term success of the programme.
- The children should be given the lifestyle
educational information provided
Although this is primarily a programme about physical
activity, it's important to provide the children
with information that educates them on other ways
to stay healthy.
- All clubs and schools must take part
in the evaluation
We are providing all the children with activity
surveys to measure their progress and lifestyle changes.
These will generate reports to help us show the impact
of the programme (copies available on request). -
The club/centre and school contacts will also be
required to complete an evaluation at the end of
each programme this feedback is vital to the development
of the programme.
All abilities catered for:
The programme is designed so that all children can take part, regardless of ability
thus allowing youngsters who have negative views on activity to receive positive,
opinion changing experiences.
