SPORT England has given Oldham College’s work to get students active an additional annual £48k funding boost.
The news comes at a time when all students are working remotely and highlights the fact that physical activity is now more important than ever – not just for maintaining physical fitness, but also mental wellbeing.
Sport England’s ‘Tackling Inactivity in Colleges’ (TIIC) programme – which is delivered with the Association of Colleges – seeks to address the fact that nearly one in five students at England’s further education colleges are not active enough.
Oldham College was first awarded funding in 2017 and now – for Year 4 of the scheme (2020/1) – our allocation is to rise by £48,401 to a new total award of £193,604.
Adam Farrell (pictured, right), our Sport England, College Sports Maker, said: “The TIIC fund has allowed us make a great impact on the amount of inactivity within the college.”
“Last year we had a dramatic decrease in the number of students who are inactive from 68 per cent to a staggering 12 per cent, which shows the work we’re doing is having a great impact.
“The project has seen lots of good work in 2019/20 and impact with our key target groups. A great example is our work with the disability students. They take part in a weekly Zumba session, which they really enjoy, and tutors have told us this is also having a significant impact on a lot of students’ confidence and communication skills.
“Looking ahead, we’d like to do some more focused activities working with females, who are classed as a ‘hard to reach’ group in terms of doing physical activity and sport.
“With the right promotion and speaking to students directly about what they want, I believe we can significantly increase the numbers of females engaging with us in 2020/21.
“One example of this will be to use the new gym that is scheduled to open as part of the modernization of campus. Working with the Sport department we’ll open the gym at selected times during the week for female-only sessions. This will hopefully make female students feel more comfortable doing exercise and – with the gym being on-site – will make it easier and more accessible for them.”TIIC has already seen £5m invested across 49 colleges to help reduce the estimated 138,000 young people who are doing less than the recommended 150 minutes of physical activity each week.
With just 12 per cent of our students now classed as inactive by Sports England, we compare favourably to the national average of 18 per cent.
