Children's activity levels in North East hold firm

The results of Sport England’s annual national Active Lives Survey for Children and Young People have been released (7th December 2023), covering the academic year 2022 – 2023.

The report summarises the sport and physical activity behaviours of 5 - 16-year-olds in England and also provides us with some local data for the six local authorities of Northumberland and Tyne & Wear.   

We have produced a summary of the local results, which shows continued progress towards increasing physical activity among our children and young people, but also that there is still the need for more work to support all children and young people to have an active lifestyle.  

Statement from Clare Morley, Chief Executive Officer at Rise: 

“The latest Children and Young People’s Active Lives Survey Report shows us that perhaps not too much has changed in the space of 12 months. Having said that, taking the longer view, the positive news is that compared to five years ago some of our local authority areas are seeing significantly lower levels of inactivity. Which is great news. 

“In particular, Gateshead, North Tyneside and Sunderland have changed from having higher levels of inactivity than the England average five years ago, to much lower levels. 

“These are amazing achievements by all of those involved in helping children and young people to be more active and we are all playing a part to ensure this progress continues.  

“In the other local authority areas on our patch, there is a lot of hard work taking place to turn these results around and tackle the multiple reasons for inactivity and we’re continuing to work with our partners to focus on a broad range of initiatives and programmes to support them. 

“When considering the gap between the areas in our catchment with the highest and lowest proportions of physically active children and young people, there has been a decrease from 16.6% in 2017-18 to 11.4% in 2022-23, which shows that good progress is being made. 

Overall, we know that in our area and the North East in general, the inequalities that are faced by many of our communities have a significant impact on levels of physical activity and that is why our mission remains to use the power of sport and physical activity to tackle inequalities and create a higher quality of life for those who need it the most in Northumberland and Tyne & Wear.”