VoicED Releases Results of School Sport Mini Survey: In the summer term of 2014, following the Commonwealth Games and Wimbledon, VoicED carried out a small scale survey with 115 education professionals to understand perceptions of school sport. This document details the findings of those results. The findings of this survey should be seen as indicative, but there are some important indication – view the full research report here free of charge.

VoicED Releases Results of School Sport Mini Survey

According to the findings, almost all teachers who completed the survey felt that school sports lessons have an important role to play in promoting a healthy lifestyle. In addition, three quarters felt that taking part in competitive sport once a week also helped with academic performance.

Sport can also be a useful way in which to engage pupils – with four fifths (82%) believing that utilising sporting themes in lessons can help pupils engage with other subject matter.

In the academic term before the research took place (Summer 2014), 80% of the teachers responding to the survey had utilised a sporting event (i.e. the FIFA World Cup or The Wimbledon Championships) in their lessons in order to engage students.

Overall, 91% of teachers would be interested in themed teaching packs which were focused around specific sporting or cultural events. This included 47% who were definitely interested, as well as 44% who were possibly interested. The most popular elements that teachers wanted to see in these resource packs were that they would be subject specific, include activities or lesson plans, be cross curricular and include ‘resources’ where possible.

Speaking about the report, Elliot Simmonds has the following to say:

“Whilst this report was completed pro-bono with members of our research community, and thus the base is relatively small, there are some useful figures as well as qualitative insights contained within it. Particularly, teachers see sport-orientated resources as a positive example of how to engage pupils; for instance utilising football to fight racism and engaging challenging pupils in terms of behaviour in the classroom.”