This presentation is a collaboration of presentations from primary schools: Christ Church (Amy Conroy), Cavendish (Michael Clarke) and High Crags (Carla Goodey) in Bradford. Project Description: The Creating Active Schools (CAS) Programme is the UK's first co-designed whole-school approach to physical activity underpinned by both behavioural and implementation science. The CAS programme has been developed, piloted and implemented within Bradford primary schools. Currently, it is being evaluated to understand how it is implemented within different primary schools contexts, environments and cultures, and its impact on physical activity levels and provision across the whole-school system. Ripple effects mapping is one method being used to understand the longitudinal implementation of CAS within these schools, and understand the impact on the whole-school system. Impact: A total of 15 schools have participated with REM across two years of CAS. It has been reciprocally beneficial as schools have embraced having prolonged periods of reflection to help them advance with CAS, whilst we have been able to understand how CAS has been engaged with and implemented whilst identifying the intended and unintended impacts of CAS. Learning: Ripple Effects Mapping has been central to learning how different schools adopt CAS and the impact of this. It has also helped schools to identify their own implementation, successes, goals and understand determinants to engaging with the programme. This presentation will detail what Ripple Effects Mapping is, how schools have used it to understand their journey with the programme, and showcase how CAS has supported each school in a different way to enhance whole-school physical activity provision.

Project Description: Originally using step counters to improve activity levels for groups and individual pupils. Using the CAS framework to identify areas of possible development. Gaining knowledge from other practitioners and experts to make changes to the school offer for children. Impact: Children's activity levels have improved significantly. Behaviour has improved. Children have taken part a greater range of activities. Pupils are eating more fruit. Pupils play out in the wet. More pupils travel actively to school. Learning: I have learned a great deal from a great number of people mostly from non sports specialists. I have learned that sport, physical activity and education should be demarcated and catered for in school. I am learning about the provision for vulnerable children (which includes inactivity) is more holistic than I originally thought. I will learn how to get our inactive girls to be more active.

Following COVID lockdowns, and a whole-school trauma shortly after, our school struggled with social interactions and behaviour across whole-school. We adapted our play provision so that it includes zoning, upcycling, creative play and the role of supervision. This led to the change of attitudes and culture of the school’s community understanding and position on play ,particularly in relation to risk, adult control and all-weather play. Whole-school training, a co-developed whole school ethos and a positive change in pupil activity levels and social behaviours led to the creation of our Play Provision policy. This policy change was enabled by a Headteacher and SLT who was willing to take risks; a whole-school team who observed the benefit of change that was necessary to develop the children; and a working group of governors, members of SLT, teaching assistants and teachers to lead on this. The success of this led the school to creating a ‘Physically Active’ curriculum offer based upon the Creating Active Schools framework. Whole-school staff have received internal and external training and support. This includes participation in the Together An Active Future’s Middle Leaders Programme working across schools in Pennine Lancashire. This has been a research-based programme that follows the principles of CAS and has given the ‘why’ for why a physically active offer is vital. Our headteacher was also part of the co-production of the middle leader program in our area. Our next steps as a school is to become a ‘beacon’ school in Pennine Lancashire that can support other schools on their journey. We want to work alongside them to improve physical activity levels for children within their establishment across all areas: curriculum and play. I have completed the middle leader program and as a result of this have two days a week to support more schools in our area.

Our Active Lives Survey with Barden reported we had 30% of children are considered active. We found this data extremely concerning, especially as only 36% of pupils were achieving 30+ minutes of activity during the school day. We decided we needed to address this issue in order to make change. We registered to be a pilot school in Burnley, using the CAS framework to become an active school. We created a team of staff across different areas in school, who meet half-termly to work on this shared vision and drive change and innovation. We wanted to have a holistic approach to becoming an Active School and therefore created a pie of the 6 key areas we felt were most important to our school, ensuring it was personal to us. Our chosen areas were: Quality PE, Active Learning Environment, Extra Curricular Enrichment, Healthy Minds and Parental Engagement. We created an action plan of which areas we wanted to begin working on, starting with Active Learning. A shared vision across the school, particularly with SLT, has enabled us to make changes. Our headteacher is passionate about becoming an active school and is a member of the team. This has enabled us to ensure these new approaches are embedded throughout school, by delivering training and including them within the teaching and learning policy. We have also been part of the TAF middle leadership course, helping us to share resources and ideas, and reflect on the changes we have made so far. We are on the journey and making progress towards becoming an active school. Active learning is now something which is monitored, as it is part of our teaching and learning policy. This is leading to us changing the culture and mindset of the staff to ensure every child is given the opportunity to live a healthy, active lifestyle.

Project Description The Active School Flag (ASF) is a whole-of-school programme in Ireland, aiming to get “more schools, more active, more often”. The ASF post-primary programme places great emphasis on student voice and leadership. Senior students aged 15-16 years have a peer leader (PL) role in ASF and implement the whole-of-school programme with the support of their teacher. As part of their PL role, students receive shared leadership training and have a weekly timetabled class where they plan and implement physical activity (PA) events for the whole school. The purpose of this study was to assess how being a PL in ASF influenced the PL’s school experience. Focus groups were conducted with PLs at the end of the school year, in eight schools at the second stage of implementing the ASF programme. Focus groups consisted of 3-6 students and were carried out online (n=6), or in person (n=2). Reflexive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2019) was used, and generated five themes and 29 subthemes. Impact and Learning Implementing the ASF programme provided PL’s with a positive experience of school throughout the year. The PL role in ASF provided unique experiences, including leadership opportunities and increased involvement in promoting PA in school. PL’s felt they were contributing positively to the school and their ASF work was valued. The ASF helped PL’s develop positive relationships with school members. PL’s also had challenges in ASF, due to school members lack of awareness and recognition of the ASF programme. PL’s were able to thrive in the academic year through taking on responsibility to lead ASF. The ASF has several components for the PL’s to engage with school members. The PL’s were in schools in stage 2 of a 3-stage model, and more emphasis is needed to raise awareness of the PL in the school as part of the programme.

Since becoming a part of the Active School Programme and completing the Creating Active Schools Framework, it highlighted the areas we needed to focus on as a school. As a member of SLT I knew it was vital to share these findings with other SLT members and start the process of creating a physically active curriculum based on these findings from the CAS Framework. This led to myself and the Head making this a priority and including it on our SIP (School Improvement Plan). During staff meetings, whole school staff have been informed of the vision we have for our school in developing a more active curriculum. All staff were positive when informed of the vision and during meetings highlighted to us the times when our children were least active. It was brought to our attention that as a faith school during our prayer and liturgy our children throughout the week were sedentary for 2.5 hours a week. This was the first area within our school timetable that we knew needed to change. Now we have made it a priority to make our Prayer and liturgy more active especially during hymns. Our next steps as a school is to provide staff with training to create active lessons across the curriculum and work alongside other faith schools within the trust and other active schools across Pennine to improve children’s activity levels, mental and social well-being.

Our aim was to gain insight into how primary schools integrate physical activity (PA) during the school day. We visited four schools where we interviewed the school principal, the physical education (PE) teacher and at least one classroom teacher. In our interview we addressed policy, opportunities, stakeholders, environment and impeding and facilitating factors, according to the components of the Creating Active Schools framework. The representatives of all schools acknowledged the importance of PA for children during schooldays. They encouraged biking or walking to school, implemented physical active learning and active breaks and adhered to the mandatory two PE lessons per week. At two schools PA was well integrated during the school day, ensuring that children were active every 30 minutes of the day using energizers, physically active learning, recess activities or PE. Within these schools, integration of PA is supported by the entire school team. The driving force behind enhancing PA is either the head principal or the PE teacher. Also, at the third school the PE teacher plays a major role. This school was underway, exploring ways to successfully implement a whole school approach in which they embedded the importance of PA in policy, however within recess and in the classroom there are opportunities to enhance PA. At the fourth school PA was not integrated in a structural way, possible due to the absence of a driving force. Main challenges we identified based on the interviews were limited time and finances. Our findings can serve as inspiration for other primary schools to enhance PA during the school day. Using these insights, we plan to develop an evaluation tool that supports schools in their decision on which strand of the CAS Framework to focus.