East Midlands Legacy - Children & Young People

Increased sport and physical activity

The East Midlands is around the national average of 50% of children and young people accessing three hours of quality physical education and sport through their schools. The region is typified by a sometimes brilliant but generally patchy picture of intra and inter school competition which the region’s Competitions Managers, PDMs, SSCos and PLTs are working hard to standardise as high quality across the board. The region recognises and rewards elite performers through mentor programmes, awards and grants such as Lincolnshire’s LEAP programme, the Talented Athlete Mentoring Programme from Sport Nottinghamshire and LeicesterShire’s GO GOLD.

There are strong Sport Unlimited projects across the region and great Dance provision on a local and regional level. A recent East Midlands Dance platform, U Dance, showcased some of the region’s incredibly talented young dancers.

The infrastructure nationally for encouraging young people to be physically active and sporty has never been better and with the added stimulus of London 2012 we have a golden opportunity to push towards the aspiration of all children and young people taking part in a minimum of five hours of physical activity a week.

The Lloyds TSB National School Sports Week from 28th June to 2nd July is another great opportunity to use the inspiration of 2012 to get all young people more active and feeling fitter and better about themselves. http://2012.youthsporttrust.org/home/index.html provides more ideas and the whole of the site is full of exciting opportunities and case studies of success.
The national free swimming programme has been very popular in the region with many local authorities gaining Inspire Mark for their schemes.

As part of Open Weekend 2009 the new Corby International Pool was opened by Olympian, Mark Foster, whose presence ensured that children and young people were queuing around the block to swim in this exciting new pool