Background
Methods
Quantitative data
Qualitative data
Qualitative data analysis
Results
Quantitative findings
Active | Youth clubs* | Sedentary | |||||||
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All children
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N | Mean | SD | N | Mean | SD | N | Mean | SD | |
Week 0 | 163 | 3.4 | 1.65 | 48 | 1.1 | 0.44 | 58 | 1.5 | 1.01 |
Week 5 | 151 | 3.4 | 1.72 | 48 | 1.1 | 0.44 | 61 | 1.8 | 1.09 |
Week 10 | 134 | 3.0 | 1.40 | 36 | 1.2 | 0.59 | 56 | 1.7 | 0.92 |
Week 15 | 104 | 3.3 | 1.41 | 34 | 1.3 | 0.68 | 43 | 1.7 | 0.97 |
Week 20 | 101 | 3.1 | 1.50 | 34 | 1.1 | 0.33 | 51 | 1.6 | 0.80 |
Girls
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N | Mean | SD | N | Mean | SD | N | Mean | SD | |
Week 0 | 95 | 3.4 | 1.72 | 31 | 1.2 | 0.52 | 41 | 1.5 | 0.75 |
Week 5 | 86 | 3.5 | 1.76 | 27 | 1.1 | 0.42 | 39 | 1.7 | 0.81 |
Week 10 | 85 | 3.1 | 1.52 | 27 | 1.3 | 0.66 | 42 | 1.8 | 1.00 |
Week 15 | 71 | 3.3 | 1.27 | 24 | 1.3 | 0.76 | 34 | 1.9 | 1.02 |
Week 20 | 66 | 3.0 | 1.34 | 28 | 1.1 | 0.26 | 34 | 1.6 | 0.81 |
Boys
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N | Mean | SD | N | Mean | SD | N | Mean | SD | |
Week 0 | 68 | 3.5 | 1.56 | 17 | 1.1 | 0.24 | 17 | 1.5 | 1.51 |
Week 5 | 65 | 3.3 | 1.67 | 21 | 1.1 | 0.48 | 22 | 1.5 | 1.46 |
Week 10 | 49 | 2.9 | 1.20 | 9 | 1.1 | 0.33 | 14 | 1.5 | 0.76 |
Week 15 | 33 | 3.2 | 1.69 | 10 | 1.2 | 0.42 | 9 | 1.0 | 0.00 |
Week 20 | 35 | 3.3 | 1.70 | 6 | 1.3 | 0.52 | 16 | 1.6 | 0.81 |
Qualitative findings
“I think if we could have given a taster beforehand, because I think the children thought it was going to be more of, “You’re going to lose weight. You’re going to do this. You’re going to do that”. I think their perception of what it was, was something slightly different. I think the take-up would have been different had they realized it was such a good after school physical activity club.” (KC, Female, School 6, Intervention).“So we thought perhaps we could’ve, do a taster session for all of our Year 5 s. To come along, have a go, see what they think, because I think, again, people just didn’t know …” (TA, Female, School 6).
“I wish we could have chosen the children that attended. I know there was children there that didn’t really get a hundred percent out of it, but children that weren’t allowed to go [not part of the club] would have.” (TA, Female, School 4).“That’s one other thing that could have been maybe changed; was actually involving the TAs beforehand in the actual process of thinking about what kids it would be good to get to do it. You feel like, “Oh, there’s some kids. It would be so good if we could have had that kid join in.” (TA, Male, School 16).
“…I think maybe if there had been a charge or some sort of agreed commitment that made a difference…” (TA, Female, School 19).“…we ask the children to make a commitment… for our children at school is that we usually say that they, they need to do it for at least a term…”(KC, Female, School 4, Intervention).
“They didn’t know the days. We had to fit it around other clubs here. I was doing a course, so it couldn’t be on Thursdays. We, literally, were forced to do a Monday and a Wednesday, so some of them couldn’t come for those reasons…” (TA, Female, School 2).
“Well, I couldn’t go any of the Mondays because I was doing another club.” (Participant 6, Male, School 2)“I had a club on one day…Fencing on a Tuesday so we couldn’t come on a Tuesday. So … we came on a Thursday.” (Participant 5, Male, School 16).
[talking about attendance] “It kind of went down. I mean, one time I had five, maybe four people…So it’s very difficult to do the session plan …” (TA, Female, School 9).
“I think the 3.30 leaders are incredible…They’re helpful, they explain things to us if we don’t actually understand, and many other things.” (Participant 6, Female, School 4).“They ask if we don’t understand as well.” (Participant 1, Male, School 10).“They were encouraging us to play, and when we didn’t like a game they were kind of encouraging us to like play it and even if we didn’t like it they were encouraging us to play.” (School 6, Participant 5, male).
“In terms of their confidence, their skills, I would say that that would have definitely improved. Their agility and their physical abilities have improved…” (TA, Female, School 6).[Talking about the children’s physical skill improvement]“A couple of children in particular have, because they’re more willing to have a go; they’re not as bad as they thought they were.” (TA, Female, School 8).“…I’m not a very sporty person… not good at sports, but I’ve improved since I’ve done it.” (Participant 6, Male, School 10).
“…and other children, you know, the other by-products have been … virtually all of them feel, or appear to feel much more confident in themselves, have joined other clubs as well. You know, we’ve got virtually a 100 percent take-up rate on, on extracurricular activities now, across the school…”(KC, Male, School 8, Intervention).“I think definitely for some of the girls and a lot of the more sort of timid boys. I think it was brilliant for them…Development and coordination and just confidence as well for girls. Just being able to get stuck in…Their confidence comes out really well.” (TA, Female, School 12)“It got me more confident about some of the sports that I hadn’t done much of… Because there were some sports that… I know and I’m really quite good at and there were sports that I don’t play much and it helped me get my confidence up on it.” (Participant 2, Male, School 12).
“Well, we expected it be like, like ‘do this, do this!’, but they give us choices, and we had the child- led sessions as well, which I didn’t expect.” (Participant 3, Male, School 9).“I think it’s like, I think I’m like, it helped me like work as a team, because most of the games, like it needs like a group to play it…” (Participant 5, Female, School 12).“I think the children understand teamwork better, and I think I do too because you don’t have to be a brilliant player at something.” (TA, Female, School 8).“I think that it has further developed; they’ve got very good team working skills already, the children here have got really good relationships, but I’m sure it’s further developed them in a really structured programme.” (KC, Female, School 10, Intervention).
“Like if we were playing that, football, you’d … TA1 and TA2 would change the rules like every five minutes, so then there was this one time when we were playing football and then we were allowed to use our hands” (Participant 5, Male, School 10).“…there’s tons of sports that I like and I just like the way that you play them with the different types of ways and all different rules.” (Participant 3, Male, School 19).“I like Action 3.30 because you can try lots of different sports that you’ve never tried before.” (Participant 2, Male, School 4).
So like when the children sessions were on, I really enjoyed it because like we could choose our game.” (Participant 6, Male, School 2).“Because we were allowed to choose what we wanted to do instead of having to follow what Miss chose for us to do.” (Participant 3, Female, School 4).“Because you get to make up your own little discoveries and stuff. I don’t know how to pronounce it better.” (Participant 6, Female, School 4).
“I think the way it gets everyone involved worked really well and the fact that the children can be involved in planning the sessions because some of them are pupil-led, so they get involved” (TA, Female, School 19).
“The children go, ‘Oh, that was boring,’ or, ‘Oh, I don’t want to do that’…especially the girls.”(TA, Female, School 8).“…some of the kids were, some of the girls in particular. It eludes me why they signed up in the first place … they weren’t really that interested.”(TA, Female, School 12).“…the boys just pass to each other and not to the girls, because they don’t really think that they’ll score or anything, and they’ll just let it go to the other team. They just play with each other. It’s not really fun because all the girls just stand around, waiting for someone to … the ball to come to them, but it never does so they don’t really get to play.” (Participant 2, Female, School 10).“Yeah, and that the boys would never pass to the girls.” (Participant 3, Female, School 16).
“…our leaders…they don’t mind and they join in sometimes. It just makes it quite enjoyable.” (Participant 3, Male, School 6).“I found that they joined in with the games, which made us feel a lot more good with the games, because we knew they were not just sitting around watching us do it.” (Participant 6, Female, School 9).
“Maybe there wasn’t quite enough [training] in terms of how to…what scenarios to do when you’ve got children that are difficult, to what to do. If there’s persistent problems, what’s the … what should you do with these kind of children?”(TA, Male, School 16).“[talking about behaviour management training] That probably would have been more beneficial than … I know we needed lots of practical stuff… we could’ve shared ideas more and I think we did in one, the booster session, but not in any great detail.“(TA, Female, School 2).
“It was like, loads of kids shouting and screaming and doing disrupting and stuff. So it was really hard to like, get on with what we’re actually doing with the sport” (Participant 2, Female, School 19)“Sometimes they [TAs] could be not strict enough and when somebody kind of goes off, they … they kind of, um, not really know what to do that much.”(Participant 5, Male, School 16).
“They weren’t babyish but they were … [the children] were a bit too old for them [the activities].” (Participant 5, Female, School 8).“…we felt for year 5 and 6, a lot of the games weren’t age appropriate. It's difficult with year 5 and 6 because sometimes you can get a really mature group … a lot of them were in teams outside school as well.” (TA, Female, School 12).“…maybe to grab them that year earlier sort of year four / five, because while they’re still that little bit more open to suggestion and they’re not as worried to look a bit silly in front of their friends, and again the hormones just aren’t there. And they haven’t got the SATs.” (TA, Female, School 8)
“… rather than listening to everyone or different people, it was the same people. (Participant 1, Male, School 8).“They listened to maybe two or three and like there’s lot in the session, there’s about twenty five in the club so they would only listen to two or three and lots of people were dying to see their rule but they, they just went with the first one they heard usually.” (Participant 2, Female, School 10).
”…sometimes we’d have really fun sports that only lasts like, two minutes. And it’s just go along to something boring… I at least want to have time to get into it and start to enjoy it, instead of just doing it for like, two minutes then getting on to something that I don’t like doing.” (Participant 3, Male, School 19).“Having it an hour long and trying to fit quite a lot into it, we realized fairly early on that you’re trying to cover too much stuff. The kids were getting a little bit agitated a lot by the changing.” (TA, Male, School 16).
“There’s things you, maybe some of the games I didn’t quite understand….So, I have to get my head around that and then I would go email [the Action 3:30 trainer]…You know, could you just describe this.” (TA, Female, School 4).“…it would be nice to have a DVD of the different activities and how they are because…in the manual sometimes the games are not explained very clearly sometimes.” (TA, Female, School 19).
“You could like add like new rules to make the game…If it’s challenging, then, it be like harder it’d be more fun.” (Participant 5, Male, School 10).“I don’t really find the activities that hard because they were just like, once they were set they didn’t like change anything more harder, they were just not very hard.” (Participant 2, Female, School 6).
“When we done dodgeball first, it was like before we changed it, we had to sit out a little…It’s boring.” (Participant 5, Female, School 9)
“Because it wasn’t really sports that you would ever have in the Olympics because there was like …we weren’t like, doing sports that you would really do because it was just like jumping over like, these really like, small hurdles.” (Participant 4, Female, School 16).
“I thought most of them would be just for family because it said ‘teach your family and friends.’ So I thought I’d ask my family, but they all said no, so I thought, what was I going do with that on my own?” (Participant 2, Male, School 2).“Like some of the paragraphs of the games to play didn’t have pictures. So, on one of them, I read the information and I liked it, but there was no pictures so I didn’t get the aim of the game, so I was a bit stuck.” (Participant 1, Male, School 10).
Source | Improvement | Reason for improvement | Action required |
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TA | Identify the commitments of the children before selecting the days the club will run. | Children didn’t know which days the club would run on. This meant some children had other competing commitments and couldn’t always attend. | Identify the best days for the club to run to maximise attendance (i.e., avoiding clashing with alternative school activities) |
CFG | Amend hand-outs so they can be used by children on their own in addition to with others (if possible) | The activities on the hand-outs were often designed for use with family and friends but some children said they couldn’t use them when they had no one to play with. The hand-outs could have more pictures of the game being played. | • Adjust games to include more games that can be played solo. |
• Include more pictures of the game being played. | |||
• Include more games that don’t need special equipment or suggest alternatives | |||
TA & CFG | Revise programme to increase engagement of girls | TAs: Girls were less interested in the club and presented a greater challenge than the boys in terms of motivation. CFG: Boys tended to dominate team games | • Adapt session plans to include activities that will engage girls and identify ways to make session more appealing to girls (i.e. less direct completion and more within person goal setting and monitoring) |
TA, CFG & KC | More age appropriate sessions | TAs: Some of the games were too easy (especially for those who played sports outside of school); | • Amend sessions that are too easy |
• Lower age group to year 5 | |||
TA & KC | Conduct intervention in Year 5 s not 5 & 6 | Year 6 s tend to be less enthusiastic (especially girls) & have SATS, & thus a younger group may have higher attendance. |
Leaders manual | |||
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Source | Improvement | Reason for improvement | Action required |
TA, CFG | Reduce the amount of content in each session | TAs: Children would become agitated when having to regularly change activities; CFG: More time should be given to one activity so it can be played properly. | • Amend individual session plans by reducing number of activities and allowing time for children to experience and master tasks as well as making them more difficult |
TA | Improve the clarity of the session plans | Some TAs found some sessions hard to understand. A DVD/video of activities could be a helpful resource. | • Review sessions plans for clarity |
• Produce a DVD of activities or series of online videos that TAs can refer to. | |||
CFG | Changes to specific activities | 1) Exclusion games (e.g. dodge ball) can be boring. Children wanted activities to reflect the nature of the sports they were based on, and seemed to value these more as “sports that you would really do” | 1) Include options for TAs to utilise to keep all children involved in an activity (instead of sitting out)-cover this more in training. |
2) Include athletics activities that the children can relate to & avoid activities such as running laps. | |||
Training
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Source
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Improvement
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Reason for improvement
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Action required
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TA & CFG | More behaviour management training | TA: Dealing with bad behaviour was disruptive to club but the training didn’t cover enough on behaviour management | • There should be less practical & more time allocated to behaviour management & for TAs to share ideas. |
TA | Training could allow time for TAs to share ideas | Instead of mostly practical based training, scheduling time for TAs to share their ideas on running the club would be helpful. | • TAs may want to seek an agreed behaviour policy with school, so they can act confidently. |
CFG | Adapt activities to make them more challenging | Games should be made more challenging to keep them exciting to the children (add new rules & twists). | • More training on adapting games to make them more challenging |
CFG | TAs should get involved with activities (if possible) | Some children said they liked it when TAs joined in with them; this made the games more enjoyable. | • Encourage TAs to join in with activities as a strategy to aid enjoyment and understanding |
CFG | Consider children’s opinions & activity choices & make sure decisions are fair. | Children said that not everyone was listened to when children were given choice over activities or when offering rule changes to games. | • Training should include ways of making sure that everyone gets a fair say in the activities |