Herts Sports and Physical Activity Partnership has been awarded a share of £57 million from the Department for Education's Opening Schools Facilities fund. 

The money will go towards supporting schools to open their sporting facilities for the surrounding community and school users outside of the normal school day.

More than 30 Hertfordshire schools will be able to open their facilities for children, young people and the wider community to access more opportunities to be physically active, before and after school, during weekends, evenings and school holidays.

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Schools can use this funding to purchase equipment to deliver new or additional clubs, train employees to obtain qualifications and to pay for activity deliverers to run the clubs.

Priority will also be given to projects encouraging women and girls to be more active, those that help disadvantaged and culturally diverse communities and those supporting special educational needs.

The Active Partnerships National Team were awarded the funding in collaboration with partners StreetGames, UKactive and the Youth Sport Trust.

The Comet: Young people developing their boxing skills.Young people developing their boxing skills. (Image: Herts Sports Partnership)

Chief executive for Active Partnerships National Team Andy Taylor said: “We are delighted that schools across England will receive a share of this new three-year investment to help them open their sporting facilities outside of the normal school day.

"Our network of 43 Active Partnerships will support schools to develop and deliver their plans. We aim to engage with 1,350 schools throughout the funding programme."

A recent survey carried out by Active Lives, Sport England, revealed that children and young people’s activity levels overall have recovered to pre-pandemic levels, with 47 per cent of children meeting the Chief Medical Officers’ guidelines of taking part in an average of 60 minutes or more of sport and physical activity a day.

                                                                                                         

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However, those from low affluence families are still less likely to be active than those from high affluence (42 per cent compared to 52 per cent).

Results also showed children and young people going to school in the most deprived places in the country have not seen activity recover to pre-pandemic levels.

The funding scheme is set to adopt these learnings to deliver localised activity across England where it is needed the most.