PRO-ACTIVE North London, the sub-regional Partnership comprising the four north London boroughs of Barnet, Enfield, Haringey and Waltham Forest, recently commissioned Knight Kavanagh & Page to undertake a survey to which 14,000 young people in Years 6 and 9 responded.

The aim was to gain an insight into their activity levels as well as their attitude to sport and their knowledge about local opportunities and facilities.

Completed by the young people during the school day, the questions covered time spent on physical activity each week, usage of local leisure centres and difficulties faced in participating in sport. The survey yielded some interesting findings.

Gender

Differing extra-curricular participation rates between the genders are apparent in Year 6, with 73.5% of boys and 60% of girls in Year 6 participating. This widens to 64.2% of boys and 49.5% of girls participating in Year 9.

Girls were more aware generally about local leisure facilities, as well as opportunities such as holiday courses and the London Youth Games.

Among those in Year 9 the most common reason for not participating in sport was having no one to go with, although 34% of girls cited this compared with 19% of boys.

Ethnicity

When looking at participation rates in terms of extracurricular activity, club membership, and leisure centre usage, young people from the Asian-Pakistani community and other Asian groups in Year 6 have the lowest rates in all three categories.

These also have the highest percentages of poor or non-swimmers (self-rated ability). By the time they have reached Year 9, just 8% of white young people rated themselves as a poor or non-swimmer, compared with 42% of young Asian-Pakistani young people.

Young black people have the highest participation rates in extracurricular activity in both Year 6 and Year 9. Young white people are most likely to join a sports club, use a leisure centre and participate in physical activity for at least one hour a day.

Partnership Director Adrian Ledbury commenting on the survey said, "The Partnership, together with its partners will be using this information to inform policies and priorities. We are planning to repeat the survey in three years time to measure the impact of its work and to identify trends."

This latest survey followed the success of a similar survey undertaken by KKP in the London Borough of Enfield in 2003. The findings of this survey have been used to inform and underpin its sports development work.

Since 2002 KKP has conducted similar surveys for over 80 local authorities and now holds participation data and related information on over 150,000 young people.