Girls Active Programme - Sligo Sport and Recreation Partnership

Discussion
One co-ordinator who is also a PE teacher revealed
that she has modified her practice of PE teaching
to some extent as a direct result of her experience
of the programme. In another school, participation
in Girls Active is utilised by staff as a selling point
to the parents of potential students.
There is one school, not a case study school,
that has been running two Girls Active groups
for the past two years reflecting a strong belief
by management in the value of the programme
for its students. This school has subsequently
also undertaken to develop other programmes to
get students physically active such as a walking
programme. In addition, some non-involved schools
have asked to join the programme.
5.3.3 Wider Impacts
There is evidence that the programme has
already achieved some broader impacts on the
area of women in sport generally. One of the
support agencies to the project, Donegal Sports
Partnership, has used the experience of Girls
Active to develop an initiative with women from
the Travelling Community where the target group
was actively involved in choosing activities and
determining the circumstances of its roll-out.
Another support agency, Sligo Sport & Recreation
Partnership, recently organised a ‘Women in Sport’
conference in collaboration with HSE West, where
girls involved in Girls Active made contributions to
the discussion and from which it is anticipated that
a plan of action will be developed to promote and
value women’s participation in sport in the region.
5.4 Concluding Remarks
did not like certain aspects of traditional competitive
sport such as the pressure to win. When given an
opportunity through Girls Active to choose other
kinds of physical activities, however, it is notable that
these ‘non-sporty’ girls responded very positively
through their attendance and their enthusiasm for
the programme. The girls felt motivated by a desire
to get fitter, to be more active and to have fun –
common reasons why anyone might get involved in
sport. It appears that what was missing for these
girls previously was a supportive environment
and accessible appropriate activities. As with the
Traveller women mentioned above, it is likely that
the lessons from the Girls Active experience may
usefully be applied to raise the physical activity
levels of other groups such as non-sporty boys.
As has already been stated, the long term
sustainability of individual programmes such as
Girls Active may be dependent on the development
of the concept of the ‘whole school’ environment
where extra-curricular activity is viewed as cocurricular
to the main programme of teaching
undertaken by schools. The ‘whole school’
approach also facilitates the formation of linkages
across various school programmes such as Girls
Active and SPHE that will build synergies and
maintain them as central to the physical, emotional
and intellectual development of all young people in
school.
Most of the girls participating in Girls Active had
previously not been active in sports either inside
or outside school. They put forward many reasons
for this in the present study and most of those
relate to a feeling of being excluded from such
activities rather than negative feelings towards
physical activity itself. They felt excluded because
they were girls, because they were not ‘good’ at
sport, because they did not like the limited range of
sporting activity available to them, or because they
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Evaluation of the Girls Active Programme - 2003 – 2005 Report