The Living Well RIC Schools project aims to reduce health inequalities and childhood obesity in the most deprived areas of Bradford through a whole system approach to physical activity, nutrition, and mental health in schools. It emphasises the importance of flexibility, collaboration, and senior leadership involvement in adopting a whole school approach to physical activity, contributing to the learnings and ongoing complexities of reducing inequalities in communities, the prevalence of childhood obesity and closing the health gap in Bradford. Adopting a facilitated model, the project is working with 30 primary schools to build relationships with senior leaders, teachers, and the wider school community to promote and deliver evidence-based interventions to upskill staff, educate families and increase the wellbeing of children. RIC Facilitators have worked with schools to implement the CAS framework; building upon the existing research alongside commissioning interventions, aiming to embed policy, adapt environments, and create opportunities for all stakeholders to increase their understanding, motivation, and capability in physical activity. Impact and Learning 70% of schools have increased physical activity throughout the school day by upskilling staff through CPD workshops such as ‘Move and Learn’ which aims to reduce sedentary time in the classroom, in addition to implementing a co-produced ‘Play Sharing Toolkit’, which aims to empower students to increase their level of activity during breaktimes. The ‘Community of Practice’ events are an invaluable opportunity for RIC school Physical Activity leaders to connect with other CAS champions, sharing interventions which have proved successful, in addition to identifying current gaps in their physical activity provision or curriculum. In conjunction with the CAS framework and ongoing research practices, the RIC Schools facilitated approach is providing vital insight to support the development of a wider school’s project, Living Well Schools, which will provide support for the whole of the Bradford district.

Project Description: Active Calderdale have invested £33k into supporting 41 schools (38 primary, 3 secondary) across 3 cohorts with tapering levels of financial and human support over the past 2.5 years. Strategies have been developed and rooted into local systems to support the sustainability of current school provision and encouragement of new CAS partnerships. We are currently exploring with partners how CAS can be adapted to work within EYFS, alternative provision, SEND, and post-16 contexts. Impact: The project has involved various stakeholders, most notably the Local Authority. Consequently, CAS programmes have been implemented across the borough, reaching over 800 school staff and senior leadership teams, and 12,000 students and families. These figures continue to rise as more schools engage. Early estimates show a significant return on investment from the project (£1:7). The CAS programme is firmly established within Local Authority offers, and physical activity has become embedded across the school spectrum including curricular lessons, PE initiatives, breaks, clubs, holiday provision, active travel and events, and wider reach programmes to encompass students’ families and school staff. Numerous school policies have incorporated aspects related to physical activity promotion (n=93). OFSTED have recognised positive effects from physical activity delivery within inspections, and a school’s Active status is influencing parental choice of placement. Additional outcomes from this work include enhanced pupil attendance, classroom behaviour, learning, attainment, and staff activity levels, and influencing Local Authority policy. Learning: This presentation draws attention to insights concerning the development, implementation, and refinement of several sustainability strategies. These include (i) the ‘Healthy Schools Award’, (ii) utilising ‘CAS Champion Schools’, (iii) facilitating communities of practice, (iv) creating supportive resources, and (v) influencing local authorities.

Background. The school day and setting represents an important part of children's lives. Understanding intra- and inter-individual differences in physical activity, and the potential drivers of these differences, may support the development of improved strategies to ensure that as many children as possible have appropriate levels of in-school physical activity. The aim of this study was to examine variability in pupils’ physical activity between English primary schools within the same academic year. Methods. School physical activity data from a wearable technology company was obtained for the 2021/22 academic school year. Additional information was obtained using UK Government information about schools, including area indices of multiple deprivation scores, and estimated playground area using Google Earth. All analysis was performed using R Studio. Descriptive statistics were performed, and data visualization used to explore patterns in the data, before using multilevel models to explore the associations between children’s in-school physical activity and school variables, with pupils nested within schools, adjusted for individual characteristics. Results. The final dataset included 17,043 pupils across 165 primary schools. Children engaged in an average of 6244 steps per day within school hours and 27 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA), with 34% achieving 30-minute targets. There were large variations and inequalities seen between schools, ranging from 4253 to 8356 steps/day or 16.4-39.1 minutes of MVPA/day. On average, children at schools with higher levels of deprivation engaged in lower levels of physical activity, and the physical activity level of school staff was positively associated with pupils’ physical activity. Other school-level data, such as playground space and Ofsted ratings, not explain much between-school variance. Conclusions. There is considerable heterogeneity in physical activity in a large sample of English primary schools. Factors such as playground size did not explain between-school differences, and thus in-school physical activity is more likely to be related to school policies and practices.

Project Description: The Creating Active Schools (CAS) Programme is a whole-school physical activity approach, underpinned by behavioural change theory and implementation science to plan, deliver, and evaluate change for physical activity in schools across four areas: policy, environments, stakeholders, and opportunities. Despite the positive results on school organisational change and successful initial implementation of the programme, the impact and implementation in the longer term is still unknown. In this sense, our aim in this project is to assess the changes in implementation after two years of Creating Active Schools in Bradford. This is a qualitative descriptive study, where focus groups were conducted after 24 months of implementing the CAS programme in Bradford. School staff (n = 26) from 22 schools, CAS Champions (n = 5) and CAS Facilitators (n = 2) shared multiple perspectives on CAS implementation. Data was analysed with an inductive approach, employing codebook thematic analysis and a deductive approach informed by a priori themes derived from McKay et al.'s implementation evaluation roadmap. In addition, the findings were aligned with the domains of The Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR). Impact and Learning: The CAS programme was perceived by school staff, CAS Champions, and CAS facilitators as having greater reach within the school, with awareness of and commitment to CAS increasing in the second year. Furthermore, schools reported a shift in focus towards creating sustainable changes in school ethos and culture, supporting physical activity. The local community of practice, and the peer-to-peer learning it promoted, were valued and perceived as important in supporting schools. Consequently, there was a reduced reliance on the support offered by CAS Champions and the CAS profiling tool. Challenges consisted of the volatility of the educational system in protecting financial and human resources to help maintain the momentum of progress made in the first year, and the pressure to compete with other demands on staff time. We concluded that the implementation of the Creating Active Schools Program was perceived as effective in creating organisational and cultural change to support physical activity. These findings extend the current literature and provide novel insights into the implementation of whole-school approaches to physical activity in the longer term.

Project Description. We are in the early stages of conducting an evaluation of the OSF programme. By the time of the conference we will have conducted qualitative interviews with a number of Active Partnerships and schools related to the implementation of OSF. Key research questions include To what extent was OSF implemented as intended? To what extent was OSF intervention adopted by implementers? What are the factors that influenced how well OSF was implemented? To what extent did these factors influence how well OFS was implemented? We also have access to quantitative data and hope to be able to share some of the early findings of the programme to assess the impact of the implementation on its intended audience.

Professional sport clubs and organisations (PSCOs) have been identified as effective settings for health promotion, however, there is little research exploring the delivery of PSCOs physical activity (PA) promotion projects in real world settings. Our research sought to capture the real-world delivery of a PSCO’s PA project delivered in primary schools, and to better understand the key successes and practical challenges. A qualitative case study methodology was implemented, whereby semi-structured interviews and ethnographic observations were utilised to explore the delivery of a PSCO’s HP project delivered in deprived communities within Bristol. Interviews were conducted with primary school teaching staff and PSCO Project Leads of a Sport England-funded initiative. Approximately 14 hours of ethnographic observations were also carried out to add further in-depth understanding of PSCO HP project delivery in real-world settings. Three key themes were identified within our data: PSCOs role as more than ‘just’ PA providers in primary schools; the importance of partnership and multisectoral working to deliver PA primary school projects; the challenges and practical considerations for monitoring and evaluation (M&E) primary school PA projects. Specifically, we found that PSCO coaches were pivotal in creating positive and supportive PA opportunities for pupils and facilitated attitudinal and behavioural changes towards PA. Furthermore, our data suggest that teachers want to have an embedded role within PSCO PA projects, and their involvement, alongside PSCO coaches, may be essential in improving M&E practices. Our findings suggest that PSCOs, primary schools, local authorities, and academics should explore how further collaboration and knowledge sharing can inform the design and delivery of PA promotion projects in primary schools, alongside M&E frameworks. Moreover, our findings highlight the need for future research to explore the role of PSCOs in primary school PA provision given the current financial constraints faced by families, schools and local authorities.