Opening School Facilities

Sport England announced in February 2021 that £10.1 million of Department for Education funding (DfE) would be invested into the Active Partnership network to:

-          Help develop extracurricular opportunities and community links for children and young people.

-          Support schools to open and re-open their facilities to the local community.

This targeted investment to selected schools would build on existing funding to help schools open their facilities outside of school hours and encourage pupils to be more physically active.

The role of Active Cumbria was to provide support and investment to schools across the Summer Term 2021 to help deliver after school provision to help young people reconnect, recover and return to play. Particularly focusing on schools with swimming pools, special schools and those schools with a high percentage of pupils on FSM where locally activity levels amongst children and young people are typically low.

We were also looking where possible to support schools to help open or reopen their facilities to the local community, as local evidence suggests that schools are community hubs where people feel safe.

In 2021, 24 Schools in Cumbria gained funding to deliver additional physical activity out of school hours. Average grant offer was £4852. The map shows an overview of the impact we had across the county, although many of the icons sit on top of each other as some of the schools are in close proximity of one another but it does give a flavour of the areas we were able to work in!  Follow the links in the right-hand side bar to find out more.

Update: March 2023 a further round of funding has been announced which will see up to £57m invested in schools across England over three years.

Opening School Facilities funding will –

• Support targeted schools to open their facilities outside of the normal school day to allow children, young people and the local community to be more physically active through a variety of new opportunities
• Open school swimming pools during and outside the school day to focus on swimming and water safety lessons for all pupils
• Target locations where health inequalities exist to promote physical activity to people who find it challenging to access opportunities to be active
• Help to create a sustainable programme to encourage communities to be more physically active in the future

Active Cumbria will receive a share of these funds to continue our work for a further 3 years.