Over the past few years, the Be Active team at the Health Improvement Commission has worked very closely with staff and pupils at Guernsey primary Schools to find out more about the activity levels of pupils.
The Chief Medical Officer Physical Activity guidelines for children and young people (5-18 years) are that All children and young people should engage in moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity for at least 60 minutes and up to several hours every day. It is also recommended that children are active for at least 30 minutes every day when at school. To help schools understand when and by how much children and young people are active we have established our Moki Trial across all primary Schools in the Bailiwick.
Pupils were invited to wear a fitness tracker at school over a week. Moki Fitness Tracker is a tracker that has been specifically designed for use in schools. The tracker is faceless so pupils cannot see how many steps that they have taken. The data that is collected is simply the steps and levels of moderate to vigorous activity that is recorded on each tracker. Each school that engaged received a school-level summary of pupil activity.
Results showed:
Levels of activity per school day (children are meant to be active for at least 30 minutes per day at school).
Activity across the school day – eg how active children are during breaks, or in class time.
Whether children were active on their journey to and from school.
Results were analysed by gender. Each class also received a summary to see differences on a pupil-by-pupil basis.
Summary of findings
A total of 11 primary schools took part in a trial, and 789 students. It showed that Bailiwick of Guernsey students are 23% more active than the Moki average, highlighting strong in-school activity levels.
Boys were 22% more active and girls were 26% more active.
Pupils were active for an average of 35 minutes.
UK Moki schools ranged between 4,000 and 8,000 steps during the school day while Bailiwick of Guernsey schools ranged between 6,030 and 8,232 steps.
For our full Guernsey report click here