According to World health Organization, children and adolescents need at least 60 minutes of vigorous-to-moderate intensity physical activity daily. Many pupils are well beyond this standard, a condition that characterizes them as inactive and unhealthy. To activate these pupils we must firstly find them and then motivate them to become physically active.
School Physical Education (PE) is the only setting allowing the diagnosis of physical inactivity and the implementation of inclusive strategies for youth who mostly need Physical Activity (PA) and sport involvement.
Still, there are no concerted actions from policy makers to identify vulnerable pupils and schools with high levels of inactivity and to develop effective policies for promoting PA in these groups. This project addresses this need through the development of a roadmap for the Identification and Motivation of inactive youth who mostly need Physical ACTivity (IMPACT) including an Example of Good Practice. This is accompanied by tools allowing all interested stakeholders, and particularly educational, sport and local authorities, to have instant, updated online information about levels of inactivity across schools and across poor pupils and migrants within these schools, and the main barriers that hinder PA.
This consortium will also train PE teachers to use these tools in the diagnosis of inactive youth and the latter’s main obstacles to participate in sport and PA. We will also develop educational material and tools that will be integrated with PE curricular and will train PE teachers and multipliers on how to use this material to motivate inactive pupils and promote their sport and PA involvement. Tools and materials will be developed in 7 European languages plus a tool in Arabic. Data will be selected across 6 countries and intervention including 5 webinars will take place across 4 countries, most of them with high levels of inactivity, poverty and refugees.
The results of this project will be used to develop a European roadmap for the diagnosis of inactivity across schools and vulnerable youth in Europe and a network of stakeholders interested in the adoption of concerted actions to promote sport involvement and PA for inactive pupils.