Active Schools & CLLE Project

Active Schools Midlothian & Community Lifelong Learning & Employability Family Activity Programme January/February 2023

Background

Active schools Midlothian in partnership with Community Lifelong Learning & Employability (CLLE) would like to ensure that all physical activity & sport opportunities are reaching every Midlothian child.  We hope through family learning we can encourage children to engage with Active Schools opportunities and work together to remove any barrier to participation.

CLLE provide a yearly family learning summer programme, which is well attended.  During the 2021 summer programme, Active Schools worked in partnership to provide additional activities.  During the evaluation process, the benefits of this partnership were recognised and both teams looked to develop a provision to engage with families who would not normally access either team’s services previously.

Identified Need

‘Family Learning is a powerful method of engagement and learning which can foster positive attitudes towards life-long learning, promote socio-economic resilience and challenge educational disadvantage’ (Scottish Family Learning Network, 2016)

‘Engaging the most disadvantaged parents in their children’s education, while simultaneously offering them the chance to learn themselves, can improve pupils’ attainment by 15 percentage points and improve a child’s reading age by six months (National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE), 2013)

Sessions offered

Active Schools engaged with three partners to provide different activities each week for families to try out and learn together.  This programme ran as a 3 week multi-sport club and finished with the families involved being issued with a free family swim pass at a local Midlothian Leisure Centre.  This programme ran on a Saturday morning at Lasswade Centre and Ladywood Leisure Centre (Penicuik) at no charge to the families attending.

PARKOUR - Led by Access Parkour 

Parkour is the art of moving from point A to point B & getting past obstacles using movements such as jumping, vaulting and swinging.  The parents/carers were taught various different movements alongside the children, waking the entire family up on a Saturday morning. 

CYCLE/SCOOTING SKILLS - Led by Midlothian Active Travel

This was a fun introduction to cycling and scooting, where families built upon their current skills to gain confidence and learn together.  The session was adapted to each participant’s ability and involved some fun games, challenges and basic skill stations.

BASKETBALL - Led by Boroughmuir Blaze Basketball

This was a fun family introduction to basketball.  It involved learning some basic basketball skills, drills and fun games.

Impact

• The programme involved 37 participants who engaged with the above sessions. This was completely free of charge to the families involved removing the cost barrier to participation in sport/physical activity.
• Children and their family members are included, participating, achieving and progressing very well in their learning.
• Created positive attitudes towards life-long learning through full family engagement.
• Improvement in health and wellbeing.
• Allowed families a chance to try out fun activities they may not have accessed before at no cost.
• Encouraged to attend future family learning opportunities through Active Schools, local clubs and CLLE.

Future Work

Active Schools and CLLE plan to build on the success of this programme and use feedback to shape future projects which are in the planning stages for summer term.