Opening School Facilities: Local expertise behind success, say partners.

Organisers of the Opening School Facilities (OSF) programme say local expertise and knowledge have helped the initiative to 'smash' all of the targets it was originally set.

The programme, which was led by a consortium of partners including Active Partnerships, StreetGames, ukactive and Youth Sport Trust, was focused on opening up school facilities outside of the school day, providing opportunities for pupils as well as members of the local community to take part in movement, physical activity and sport sessions.

Supported by up to £ 57 million of funding made available by the Department for Education, it operated across three academic years from January 2023 to March 2025.

Vital

A new report published this week confirmed that the OSF programme involved 251,543 pupils and 93,264 members of local communities in 1,580 schools, with 189,071 activity sessions taking place. Through the programme, pupils took part in activities on a combined total of 3.2 million occasions.

As well as surpassing the targets that were originally set, the final report outlines additional educational outcomes from the programme. This included a vital contribution to the physical development of Early Years children in participating schools, especially those children who had missed out on key experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic.

OSF was designed to help four key groups move more, supporting underserved communities and those who have traditionally faced barriers to being active. Funding was prioritised for projects that encouraged women and girls to be more active, those living in low-income areas, ethnically diverse communities, plus projects supporting people with special educational needs, disabilities or long-term health conditions.

Other key groups were also supported, for example, children attending alternative provision such as behavioural or pupil referral units.

Remarkable

Claire Lee, Strategic Lead for Children and Young People for Active Partnerships’ National Organisation, led on the delivery of the OSF programme. She said: “We couldn’t be prouder of what has been achieved through the Opening School Facilities programme. To open up school facilities to so many pupils and community users, especially those who have traditionally faced barriers to being physically active, has been remarkable.

“I’m in no doubt that the success of the programme has been due to the fantastic partnership which has been established between consortium members, and because of the strong relationships that Active Partnerships across our network have been able to establish with schools in their local area. They have used their local knowledge and expertise to make this programme work.”

Major learnings from the programme will now be shared with the Department for Education and other Government departments to determine any next steps for the development of the project. This insight is timely following the recent Government announcement on a new approach to school sport.

The final Opening School Facilities report is available now. A toolkit has also been created by Youth Sport Trust to support schools in unlocking the potential of their facilities and making them available for community use. You can also read ukactive qualitative evaluation report and a report from StreetGames, which looks at how the youth voice was embedded into the OSF programme.

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