Activity levels among children and young people nationally have increased compared to 12 months ago, , according to England’s Active Lives Children and Young People Survey for the academic year 2024-25.
With 72,000 (1.3%) more active children and young people than there were in the academic year of 2023-24, this represents the first sign of growth following the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
While progress is encouraging, data also highlights ongoing challenges. Many young people still face barriers to being active, and inequalities in participation remain. For organisations working across leisure, health, wellbeing and communities, the message is clear…
There is still more work to do.
That’s why we have revitalised our Children’s and Young People (CYP) group with a commitment to supporting young people to be active and connected to safe, inclusive opportunities as outlined in the government’s first national youth strategy.
The group is chaired by Lauren Whaley, Active Young People Lead, at Greater Manchester Moving, who is the Active Partnership for Greater Manchester. Her role ensures that national and local guidance relating to young people aged 10-25 years is advocated for to influence systems across Greater Manchester.
Here, Lauren explains why this group is instrumental in focusing collective ambitions on what children and young people need and want to be active, while also sharing the group’s future ambitions.
The revitalising of the Children’s and Young People Subgroup represents an important step in strengthening GM Active’s commitment to supporting the next generation.
By combining national insight, local experience and a strong partnership approach, we are helping to ensure that young people remain central to the future of physical activity across Greater Manchester.
An overarching key theme behind our group is prevention starts early.
Across health, wellbeing and leisure sectors, there is growing recognition that supporting young people to build a positive relationship with movement early in life can lead to long-term benefits for individuals, communities and the healthcare system.
By focusing on young people now, the sector can help prevent future health conditions, tackle inequalities and support lifelong participation in physical activity.
Our initial collective work will focus on young people aged 12-18 years, where evidence shows participation often drops – especially among girls as they move through secondary school. We will also consider wider inclusion and inequalities, including support for groups such as young people in care, or emerging from care, and LGBTQ+ communities, for example.
While we can’t address every issue affecting young people, our aim is to focus on where the evidence shows the greatest needs and opportunities.
A good place to start is to challenge some of the negative perceptions surrounding young people in leisure environments.
In many spaces, the narrative about young people can focus on concerns about behaviour, disruption or lack of engagement.
However, the reality emerging from national data and local experiences tells a different story. Young people DO want to use leisure facilities, and we think it is vital they are seen to represent a growing and important future customer base.
As a sector, we can do this by creating more welcoming environments, designing relevant programmes, and listening directly to young people about what they want and need from their local leisure centres. Alongside this, staff need the right skills and confidence to welcome and support them well. That’s what will unlock significant opportunities for both participation and long-term sustainability.
It is often said that there aren’t opportunities for young people. We want to flip that narrative and showcase the art of the possible. There are examples across our leisure centres across GM where changes have been made to better accommodate young people – and we’re seeing growth in engagement and membership.
A good example is the work being done by Oldham Active (Oldham Community Leisure), where facilities offer a welcoming environment where young people can get active in ways that suit their goals and interests.
Their young person’s offer, available from age 13 upwards, gives them the chance to learn how to use gym equipment safely while building strength, stamina and confidence through Oldham Active’s comprehensive induction programme.
Discover more: Supporting the next generation in Oldham: How Oldham Active champions our young people | ukactive
When we say young people DO want to use leisure centres and be active, we’re not only referencing Sport England’s Active Lives Children and Young People Survey.
UK Active conducted polling with family insight agency Beano Brain, which found 40 per cent of children aged seven to fourteen want to be more physically active and almost half (49 per cent) said they’d like to be fit and healthy as adults.
That age group, known as Gen Alpha, represents about 11.75 million people or 17 per cent of the UK population, making it an important audience for our sector as current and future users of our facilities.
Discover more: Children and young people in gym and group exercise facilities
Here in Greater Manchester,#BeeWell survey responses completed by over 57,000 young people in Years 7, 8 10 in 2025 are also helping to shape the work of GM Moving and now GM Active.
By listening to and working with young people, since 2021, #BeeWell GM has heard the voices 184,000 young people, from 210 secondary schools across GM since 2021. This represents over 49.3% of those enrolled in schools across the year groups surveyed, in the largest exercise of its kind.
It is particularly insightful about participation in physical activity remaining significantly lower for girls than boys, with just one in four girls reaching the one hour a day guideline set by the government’s Chief Medical Officer.
Also identified was a lack of access to fun and free activities in the community, particularly as young girls get older, which led to GM Moving’s Feel Good Your Way campaign and collaboration with national and local organisations working in this space to understand what more we can do to improve uptake of activity for girls highlighting the positive impact it can have to their mental wellbeing.
As we said at the start, there’s still a lot to do, fuelling our commitment to collective action and sharing learning.
Discover more: Greater Manchester #BeeWell Reports & Briefings – #BeeWell
The CYP subgroup is not working in isolation. We connect closely with other GM Active working groups, including those focused on data and insight, workforce and health.
This joined-up approach will help to ensure that insights, learning and innovation are shared across the network. By bringing together experience and expertise from across the sector, we will:
It is important as a network that we listen and engage with young people regarding what they want from their local leisure facilities. It also creates a platform to connect with local and national partners, such as ukactive, Sport England and #BeeWell to align with wider sector priorities and the national youth strategy.
At this stage of our development, we want to raise awareness of the work that is happening, providing a platform to amplify the positive stories already happening across GM Active members, from innovative youth programmes and new approaches to engagement such as that of Oldham Active.
And this is just the beginning. As we develop, we’ll continue to share updates, insights and examples of good practice – demonstrating how the sector can work together to create more opportunities for young people to move, connect and thrive.
We need to bang the drum louder for children and young people. There is a lot of great work happening, but too often it goes unseen. This group is the starting point for telling those stories, sharing learning and showing what’s possible when we work together. This is just the beginning, and we look forward to sharing more as the work develops across Greater Manchester.
Ideas and projects are continuously evolving and progressing at GM Active. View our latest news stories below to find out how we are moving as one and contributing towards building the healthy, happy and prosperous Greater Manchester we all aspire to.
