The Active Lives Survey for Children and Young People is the survey that measures young people’s involvement in physical activity and sport across the whole country.
This survey is supported by Sport England, the Department of Health, the Department of Education and the Department of Digital, Media, Culture and Sport.
It looks into the physical activity and sport behaviours of children and provides a world-leading approach to gathering data on how children engage with sport and physical activity.
We manage the roll out of this survey across schools in London, engaging with a minimum of 200 schools per school term.
This is a randomly selected sample of schools in London. If your school is on the list, you should have received a letter inviting you to complete the Active Lives survey for Children and Young People before the end of the term. If you have not received a letter, get in touch.
If your school is not on this list and you would still like to complete the survey, contact us here.
Guidance for Schools
How to complete the Active Lives survey
Each term, hundreds of schools across London will be contacted to take part in the Active Lives survey.
The survey gives crucial insight into young people’s levels of physical activity and the benefits associated with living an active lifestyle to Sport England, your borough and your school, which can help to shape future investment in your area.
The minimum number of responses required for a school report to be generated is 30.
Click here for more information on school report requirements for 2021/22.
Practice surveys are also available here: Years 1-2; Years 3-6; Years 7-11; Teachers; Parents
What you get for completing the Active Lives survey
To say thank you, all schools that complete the survey will receive a personalised school report (examples for Primary and Secondary here) which details your children’s activity levels, physical literacy, swimming proficiency, wellbeing, self-efficacy, and levels of social trust.
This data can then be used to support Healthy Schools London and Primary School Sport Premium applications as well as other funding applications.
In addition, your school will receive 10 credits that can be exchanged for free sports equipment (see equipment brochure here). For primary schools where a year 1 or 2 class is randomly selected, there is an additional credit available for every parent that completes the survey.
Completing the teacher survey also ensures your school receives a Gold, Silver, or Bronze rating from the Department for Education as part of their Healthy Schools Rating Scheme. View our FAQs document on the Healthy Schools Rating Scheme here.
Active Lives Children and Young People Data
Since 2017, following on from the Active Lives Adult Survey, Sport England began gathering data on how Children and Young People engage with sport and physical activity across the country.
The England and London figures for active children (those completing 60 minutes of activity every day) is available below. For a borough-by-borough breakdown, see our dashboards. The most recent data, the 2019-20 academic year, is available below.
2019/20 Active Lives Children and Young People Data
Using the data from 2019/20, we prepared a dashboard (below) to present the behaviours of children and young people across the capital in relation to their engagement in sport and physical activity.
This dashboard shows the levels of physical activity of children and young people in each local authority and presents comparisons to the national and London averages.
To download a PDF copy of this dashboard, select the ‘download’ button at the bottom of the dashboard. Select the ‘PDF’ option and change the paper size to A4. Your PDF should now be ready to download.
