The ‘Roger Black’s Olympic Challenge’ series with the BBC was the culmination of a three month project where Roger Black worked with a group of Year 8 pupils from Hurlingham and Chelsea to improve their fitness, motivation and skills in competitive sport.
Roger Black said “This project with Hurlingham and Chelsea pupils has been a great opportunity to increase the time they spend on sport in the school. With the London Olympics in our sights I hope that schools throughout London will follow Hurlingham and Chelsea’s example and find ways of doing more sport in schools, showing teenagers that it’s not only improving their long term health but it's also great fun.”
London Mayor Ken Livingstone said: “This initiative underlines the importance of getting young people involved in more physical activity, especially during this time of year when many of us are making New Years resolutions to become fitter and more active. I hope the young people taking part are proud of their achievements and most of all, have had lots of fun.”
Sportshall provided coaching and a competition for all the children involved with a fantastic event held at Brunel University. An awards ceremony was held at London’s City Hall next to Tower Bridge for all the medallists in the event.
Roger Black's Olympic Challenge will air on BBC radio 4 on 26th, 27th and 28th February 2007 - 1100- 1130am.
An Overview to the project with the BBC
There are three main barriers to raising sporting standards in schools:
- Lack of Facilities. 34,000 fields have been sold off in the last 10 years – that’s one playing field sold off every day.
- Lack of Time. Under half of schools in UK manage to achieve the government’s target of 2 hours of PE a week.
- De-motivated pupils. With no outdoor fields, crumbling overcrowded indoor gyms and precious little allotted time, motivating kids to participate in competitive sport is extremely tough.
The result of the decline in school sport is frightening:
- A third of children in English secondary schools are now overweight or obese – nearly double the proportion a decade ago.
- The cost of the nation’s physical inactivity is estimated to lead to 54,000 premature deaths and a medical bill of a billion pounds a year.
Yet just a ten per cent increase in sporting activity at school age would help save 6000 lives a year and cut NHS costs by £500 million.
Britain’s former Olympic silver medallist, Roger Black, aims to get Britain’s kids back on the school playing fields, producing a generation fit for the London Olympics.
Roger’s Challenge
Roger will spend one term in an inner London comprehensive school that currently has no playing fields. He will work with one Year 8 class. His goals are:
- To persuade the local council to provide a secure fenced-off area inside a nearby park for daily school sport at no extra cost to the school.
- Build half an hour of daily exercise into the school curriculum in addition to the existing one PE lesson.
- To increase the fitness of every child by at least ten per cent.
His class’s fitness and academic levels will be monitored throughout the term. Their progress and motivation will be tested in an end of term athletics competition against two proud sporting schools.
If Roger’s successful, the school will roll out his new regime across all year groups.
Future programming will track this group of pupils every year from now until they leave school in 2012, comparing their sports participation rates with the national average.
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