Building a Better Future for Children’s Sports in Scotland – How Can Scotland Fulfil Its Vision of Promoting Children’s Rights in Access to Sport and Physical Activity?
Building a Better Future for Children’s Sports in Scotland – How Can Scotland Fulfil Its Vision of Promoting Children’s Rights in Access to Sport and Physical Activity?
The policy recommendations report launched today can support Scotland’s vision of embedding children’s rights through a robust national sports strategy.
The report examines how the COVID-19 pandemic affected children and young people's access to sports and physical activity, highlighting the lasting negative effects for many children who were significantly affected and never returned to pre-COVID-19 sporting activities.
Scotland’s ambition to embed children's rights in every aspect of society is the perfect platform for listening to children’s voices about their experiences of sports and physical activity and supporting their lifelong well-being.
The report's authors recognise that the Scottish Government and a range of sporting bodies are aware of and are working towards addressing some of the themes highlighted in the report.
Based on an extensive analysis of the data landscape and interviews with children, their families, and sports organisations across Scotland, the recommendations aim to support the authorities in their efforts.
The core recommendations focus on four themes that should be included in future strategy:
1. Improve data. There are significant gaps in our ability to understand children’s sport in Scotland – and a future strategy should bring Scotland in line with the latest data-driven approaches taken in other countries.
2. Avoid a ‘lost generation’ of children who experienced the pandemic. Qualitative and quantitative evidence suggests that some effects of COVID-19 risk becoming permanent. Policy and operational attention should focus on increasing opportunities for the generation who experienced the pandemic as they grow up.
3. Restore access to pre-pandemic levels. Since the pandemic, many facilities have yet to reopen. The report also suggests new ways to increase participation.
4. Fix the long-term foundations for children’s sports. COVID-19 exacerbated many long-term challenges, particularly around funding and staffing for sport.
The report's insights are based on the work conducted during a two-year transdisciplinary collaborative project led by the Data for Children Collaborative, using their ‘Impact Collaborations’ approach and was driven by a need for evidence from the Observatory for Sport Scotland (OSS).
““We have been delighted to build the collaborative team that has taken this challenge all the way from concept to recommendations in a thoughtful, multi-pronged way. It is so important to bring data to life with stories - and this project has done just that with a very tangible set of outputs, brought together by a range of contributors working together with a common purpose.””
Project partners:
Observatory for Sport Scotland (OSS)
Abertay University
Urban Foresight
Optima Connect
Mulier Institute
Links:
The Data for Children Collaborative is a specialist unit within the Edinburgh Futures Institute at the University of Edinburgh.
As part of the innovation ecosystem, our mission is to provide the best conditions for bringing together the right data and expertise to improve outcomes for every child.
We build ways to enable impactful collaborations between academia, the third, the public, and the private sectors and deliver data-driven projects with a focus on responsible innovation.