Action330: Promoting children's physical activity via enhanced after-school leadership

许多儿童没有达到首席医疗官每天一小时体育活动的目标。经常锻炼身体的成年人患心脏病、糖尿病和肥胖症的可能性较小。这些疾病导致大量的医疗费用，降低工作效率，并对生活质量产生不利影响。因此，确保每个人都参加体育活动对国家的身体和经济健康至关重要。小学毕业是建立儿童体育活动模式的关键时期。在这个年龄段发展孩子的体育活动技能和兴趣可能有助于孩子在青春期和成年期更加活跃。放学后的时间被认为是孩子们可以从事体育活动的时间。来自美国和西班牙的数据表明，课后提供的方案可以增加儿童的体育活动。虽然许多英国学校提供课后体育活动干预，但这些方案都没有经过严格的评估。教学助理（助教）是所有小学的资源，我们的经验表明，许多助教欢迎有机会提供课后活动，但缺乏这样做的技能和信心。校长们热衷于让他们的助教提供课后活动，因为这表明学校正在发展其劳动力的技能。因此，由助教提供的课后体育活动干预可能是一个具有成本效益的，可持续的intervention.Aims和objectives研究的总体目标是设计，然后评估一个新的体育活动计划，5年和6年（9-11岁）的学生，这将是由助教交付。这项工作将有两个要素。首先，我们将与助教、国家专家、儿童和家长就如何最好地提供课后体育活动计划进行定性工作。然后，我们将使用这些信息来开发一个新的助教培训计划和体育活动会议计划，助教将提供。一旦制定了干预措施，我们将对干预措施进行试点评估。这将涉及随机分配10所学校参加两个学期的新方案，另外10所学校的学生被随机分配到对照组（不干预）。我们将在新计划开始前、计划期间和计划结束后6个月收集两组儿童的身体活动和相关问卷数据，以了解他们对身体活动的偏好和感知的活动能力。这些数据将进行比较，以表明参与干预是否导致身体活动或相关感知活动能力的增加，以及六个月后是否保持变化。这项研究旨在表明，新的课后计划是否可能增加儿童的体育活动，以及当一半的学生在中学读书时，6个月后是否可能保持任何积极的影响。所获得的信息将告诉我们干预是否具有足够的价值，以保证进行全面的随机对照试验评价，如果是，试验可能是什么规模，需要收集什么数据。试点评估还将告诉我们需要收集哪些成本数据，以便我们确定项目的潜在“资金价值”。这些信息也将对诸如青年体育信托基金等设计和传播儿童体育活动方案的机构有用。这项研究也会引起学校的兴趣，因为它将提供证据，证明培训助教在提供体育活动计划方面的潜在效用，以及体育活动培训如何有助于助教的专业发展。

Context Many children do not meet the Chief Medical Officer's target of an hour of physical activity every day. Adults who are physically active are less likely to develop heart disease, diabetes and obesity. These diseases result in large healthcare costs, reduced work productivity work and adversely impact quality of life. Ensuring everyone is physically active is therefore important for the nation's physical and economic health. The end of primary school is a critical period for the establishment of children's physical activity patterns. Developing children's skills and interest in physical activity at this age is likely to help the children to be more active in adolescence and onto adulthood. The after-school period that has been recognised as a time when children could engage in physical activity. Data from the USA and Spain indicates that programmes delivered after-school can increase children's physical activity. Although many UK schools provide after-school physical activity interventions none of these programmes has been rigorously evaluated. Teaching Assistants (TAs) are a resource in all primary schools and our experience indicates that many TAs would welcome an opportunity to deliver after-school activities but lack the skills and confidence to do so. Head-teachers are keen to allow their TAs to deliver after-school activities because it shows that the school is developing the skills of its work-force. An after-school physical activity intervention delivered by TAs could therefore be a cost-effective, sustainable intervention.Aims and objectives The overall aim of the study is to design and then evaluate a new physical activity programme for Year 5 & 6 (9-11 year old) students which will be delivered by TAs. There will be two elements to the work. First we will conduct qualitative work with TAs, national experts, children and parents on how best to deliver an after-school physical activity programme. We will then use this information to develop a new Teaching Assistant training programme and physical activity session plans that TAs will deliver. Once the intervention has been developed we will conduct a pilot evaluation of the intervention. This will involve randomly assigning ten schools to take part in the new programme for two school terms with students in ten further schools randomly assigned to a control (non-intervention) group. We will collect physical activity and related questionnaire data on the children's preferences for physical activity and perceived ability to be active from both groups before the new programme starts, during the programme and 6 months after the programme has ended. These data will be compared to indicate whether participation in the intervention led to increases in physical activity or related perceived ability to be active, and if changes are maintained six months later. Applications and benefits The research is designed to indicate whether the new after-school programme is likely to increase children's physical activity and if any positive effect is likely to be maintained 6 months later when half of the students are in secondary school. The information obtained will tell us whether the intervention is of sufficient merit to warrant a full randomised controlled trial evaluation and if so what size the trial is likely to be and what data need to be collected. The pilot evaluation will also tell us what cost data will need to be collected so that we determine the potential "value for money" of the project. The information will also be of use to agencies such as the Youth Sport Trust who design and disseminate physical activity programmes for children. The study will also be of interest to schools as it will provide evidence of the potential utility of training TAs to deliver physical activity programmes and how physical activity training could contribute towards the contributing professional development of TAs.