Premier Lead The Way With Ground Breaking Project...
Premier is pleased to announce the formal launch of the My Personal Best programme as we go live with interim results of the study nationally on Monday. We believe the findings from the 18month long piece of work will help shape and inform the future strategies of government and our sector.
There are some key findings from the data and the most telling statistic is children who use Premier services consistently are fitter than those children that don’t. This may seem like a logical assumption but all previous communications had come from Premier, now we have leading independent research highlighting the benefits of expert delivery. This is MASSIVE in terms of evidencing our work we do with schools and young people.
The project has already gained interest from government with Premier CEO David Batch meeting with Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Hunt to outline the project and how it can support future government strategy. And we will be working closely with ukactive to ensure the key messages and findings from the report reach the right people.
The Pilot...
What?
The programme uses a mix of classroom based learning and practical delivery in the form of a 20meter shuttle run. All data is uploaded to the BMS building a picture of the fitness levels of the pupils over the course of the year. This data then provides schools parents and Premier with evidence to support and enhance future interventions and delivery. All this is done in partnership with the ukactive Research Institute who provide all the independent research reports for individual schools.
Why?
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With English children’s fitness levels on a downward spiral (declining at a rate of 0.95% annually), something had to be done to evidence the impact this is having and proposing solutions to combat the problem based on this evidence.
The programme was first developed in 2014 in partnership with the ukactive to answer some fundamental questions about the feasibility and scalability of a national fitness measurement programme in schools.
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Over 400 children took part in the pilot programme in the North West and the results of the research have helped us to evidence the impact of physical inactivity in young people. The new fitness measurements are aimed at providing a much more accurate measure of children’s fitness than the BMI alone, in a bid to help schools deliver a more informed view of health and fitness levels.
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In May we teamed up with Public Health Islington and Public Health Camden to launch the ‘My Personal Best’ in North London. Schools in Islington and Camden were given the chance to sign up to the brand new initiative, which involves two measurements over the space of a year, which will help to identify when children are most inactive – watch the launch video.
The pioneering research shows the ‘My Personal Best Challenge’ is a scalable and ethical fitness measurement that helps to achieve more tailored intervention in children.
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What else has happened?
- The research methodology has been published in Sports Medicine Magazine, the world’s leading publication in this area
- The project was showcased at the American School of Medicine Conference in Boston
- A number of high profile athletes have come out in support of the project including Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson and Duncan Goodhew MBE.
- The initial findings from the pilot have been presented to Jeremy Hunt and associates from Public Health England
- Ahead of the Summer Holidays the attached press release will be published to raise awareness of the drop in fitness levels over the summer holidays. Hopefully influencing change in government to provide further support to schools and parents in this period.
- From September we will be approaching more local authorities to encourage them to take part in the project to support their schools.
- Islington and Camden Public Health have commissioned a three year study across 21 schools, here’s a short video of the launch...
What Next?
- Partners ukactive are set to announce the My Personal Best programme and the research findings via the Press Release on Monday. Please take some time to read the full Press Release (Please Note: The release is embargoed until 00:01am, 04/07/16. Please do not distribute this to any external stakeholders before this time.)
- At the moment the programme is not available for individual schools to participate in
- We will provide franchisees with further guidance about the programme as it is develops
- The full white paper is still being drafted and will be circulated to all franchisees ahead of its formal publication
- Please note we refer to this as fitness measurement programme and not a fitness test
- If you have any queries about the programme please email [email protected]
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