Active Lives Children and Young People Survey 2024-25

The survey, carried out by Ipsos on behalf of Sport England received responses from over 150,000 pupils, parents, and teachers from a total of 1,750 schools. The survey was carried out online throughout the autumn, spring, and summer terms 2024-25 in a sample of schools across England. Pupils in school years 1-2 and their parents, pupils in school years 3-11, and one teacher per school completed questionnaires. Active Partnerships, School Games Organisers, and other organizations involved in supporting sports in schools recruited the schools to take part.

In this report the main comparisons are made with data from the baseline year of the survey (2017-18) and the previous survey year (2023-24).  For some key measures, trend results for all survey years are also provided.

The report covers the overall amount of sport and physical activity young people are engaged in, different activities prevalent in different year groups, and the attitudes of children and young people towards sport and physical activity. A new Physical Literacy Consensus Statement was adopted by the sector in 2023, and new questions were added to the survey in the 2024-25 academic year. There are three broad physical literacy themes: positive and meaningful relationships, learning and development, and positive experiences. Within each theme there are a number of domains; the survey collects data across a series of statements that relate to each domain.  The results for the new physical literacy questions are only presented for academic year 2024-2025 (year 8). The technical note which accompanies this publication explains more about the new physical literacy measures. 

Other topics include volunteering in support of sports and physical activity and how it is associated with wellbeing, individual and community development. 

The report includes Sport England’s inequalities metric in results to explore differences in activity, attitudes and wellbeing by reported characteristics reported by the pupil (gender, ethnicity, family affluence and access to outdoor space). This enables an understanding of the impacts of multiple inequalities.

• The report, including data tables and a technical note, has been published on the Sport England website.
• The reports from previous academic years (2017-18 to 2023-24) of the survey (years 1 to 6) are available here: Active Lives Children and Young People Survey.
   

Technical note

• A sample of schools was drawn from the Department for Education's list of schools including state primary, state secondary, and independent schools. The survey was carried out across the whole academic year with each selected school allocated to a term. Up to three year groups were selected from each school and one class within each year group were invited to take part.
• The published pupil level data are weighted to match the population as closely as possible. The technical note provides detailed information on sampling, weighting, confidence intervals, and population estimates.
• The questionnaire collected detailed information on participation in various sports and physical activities both in and outside of school over the previous week including information on the type of activity, time spent, intensity, and whether indoors or outdoors. This information was used to create the derived activity variables presented in the report.  The survey also included questions relating to key outcomes in Sport England and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) strategies such as wellbeing, individual and community development, volunteering, and sports spectating. Socio-demographic information allowed for analysis of inequalities in sports participation (differences including gender, age, affluence, ethnicity and disability). Questions on swimming proficiency and confidence were also included in the survey. The questions asked across the questionnaire varied based on the pupil's year group. Details of the questions, derived variables and definitions are provided in the technical note.

Data

Active Lives Children and Young People Survey data from survey years 1 to 6 (2017-18 to 2022-23) are available from the UK Data Service.