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Active Lives Survey 

The Active Lives Children and Young People Survey, from Sport England, gives anyone working with children aged 5-16 key data to help understand children's attitudes and behaviours around sport and activity.

How does the survey work?

Schools that are selected by Ipos Mori and Sport England to take part, will be contacted by their local Active Partnership (Wiltshire and Swindon Sport). Non selected schools can request to opt into the survey.

As a rule, one class in up to three different year groups are asked to fill out the questionnaires. However, a school can opt to complete a ‘whole school or year survey’ to receive a more comprehensive and insightful report.

While not all schools will be asked to take part in the survey in any given academic year, we estimate that schools will be asked to take part every three or four years.

Sport England have designed the survey to be as easy for schools to administer as possible. The survey can be done at any point in the relevant term, depending on what works best for the school involved.

Active Partnerships will give schools everything they need, including templates for letters to parents, information sheets for teachers and pupils, and technical guidance.

What does the questionnaire involve?

The questionnaires have been designed to be simple and enjoyable for pupils to complete and are tailored to different age groups.

They can be completed on desktop computers, laptops or tablets and take around 20 minutes to fill in. We also ask one teacher from each school to complete a 10-minute survey to give some broader context to the pupils’ responses.

Each school that takes part will be given a bespoke report summarising their own results from the survey. In addition, subject to the responses from the teacher survey (only one teacher completes) a ‘Healthy Schools Rating’* (Bronze to Gold) will be awarded.

* Not to be confused with Wiltshire Heathy Schools awards, which takes a broader approach to health and wellbeing. 

School resources

By contributing to the Active Lives Children and Young People Survey you will increase the understanding of how children and young people engage with sport and physical activity. Insight gained would also be useful for any future planning considerations regarding health and physical activity in schools.

Useful links

Information for Wiltshire Schools from Wiltshire and Swindon Sport

Information on the Sport England website