How do I create a physical activity policy for my setting?
A policy is a public statement of why, what, and how your early education and care setting is addressing the challenge of encouraging children to be active and tackle obesity. It provides a call to action that everyone can rally around. These are issues that parents and carers feel strongly about, so getting parents on board is an important part of the process of policy development.
Why do I need a policy?
A clear policy helps everyone understand what is expected of them and what part they play in making the policy a success. It also helps people feel a sense of pride and achievement when changes start to happen - both for individuals and for the organisation.
Writing and implementing a physical activity policy is also an indication of quality of care that children receive in the setting. It contributes to improving the health and well-being of children because:
- it defines the framework of action for your setting
- it informs staff training and parents/carers’ education
- it translates standards and practices into a useable form; and
- it provides consistency and continuity, improving communication with staff and parents.
Ultimately your physical activity policy should support and reinforce the value of physical activity across all areas of the setting to meet the national Physical Activity Guidelines. Although it’s tempting to use off the shelf policies, it’s important to make sure that your policy is specific to your setting, so that it meets the needs of children, staff, parents and the wider community.
Let’s now look at how to put your policy together
The policy is likely to have a better chance of success if you consider the following seven steps:
1. Nominate a key staff member
Think about who needs to be involved and who would be the best person to lead on the development of the policy. This could be your PANCo (Physical Activity and Nutrition Coordinator) wellbeing lead or a senior member of staff with an interest in physical activity. But it should not be the sole responsibility of one person. It will be more meaningful to the whole team if it is a collective responsibility so consider putting together an action group to help develop and implement the policy.
2. Consult with the team, parents/carers and children to ensure they are fully involved in the process
This provides not only an opportunity for you to explain why you want to develop and implement a physical activity policy, but it also enables staff, parents and children to contribute their ideas and views on what should be included. Think creatively about different ways to gather feedback from all stakeholders i.e. staff/parent questionnaires, small group discussions. Try using the Mosaic Approach to enable children to express their interests before during and after physical play, this is a useful way to gather feedback and often unexpected insights!
3. Carry out an audit to assess current physical activity provision
Audit and review existing physical activity policy and practice in and outdoors against the UK chief medical officers’ physical activity guidelines and statutory non-statutory frameworks. This will help you reflect on existing physical activity practices, and to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the current provision. The evidence will enable you to plan some positive steps for development and to set priorities in terms of staff training, improving outdoor provision, or developing new physical activity resources.
4. Outline the Physical activity aims of your policy
It’s important to give a clear rationale – the ‘why’ of your physical activity policy. If it is clearly articulated, it is more likely to be understood, and you can use this to help explain to staff and parents how this will support the health and wellbeing of children in terms of:
- meeting statutory/non statutory physical activity curriculum guidelines
- being integrated into the seven areas of learning and development
- ensuring that across the day children are meeting the minimum requirements of at least three hours of physical and movement activity at the setting and at home.
5. Set clear objectives and actions that meet the needs of the setting
The key question now is ‘what’ do you want to achieve? Think about to what extent the objectives of the policy align with national policy objectives and what the potential impact of the physical activity objectives is on children, staff and families.
To encourage more staff participation in physical activity play?
To improve parental involvement to ensure that children are meeting the minimum requirements for at least 3 hours of activity across the day?
To increase active travel for staff and parents to and from your nursery?
6. Plan how the policy will be communicated across the setting
Review how the physical activity policy is communicated to everyone in the setting. This could be through a variety of ways such as the settings website, social media, staff induction, supervision sessions or family show arounds. Create a space to showcase current information on physical activity for children and adults (parents and grandparents) including infographics, leaflets and links to community events.
7. Review, monitor and update the policy regularly
Finally, review and evaluate the policy regularly with the staff team to understand what works well, what doesn’t and how it could be improved. This avoids the policy becoming stagnant and simply a tick box exercise. Ideally review your physical activity provision on a termly basis with the whole team taking into account seasonal changes, staff/children's strengths and interests, child numbers and available spaces. Put measures in place to assess whether the objectives of the policy are being met and the outcomes achieved and amend and update as necessary to reflect developments.
Key takeaway
Your setting is the ideal place to give children the opportunities to be active every day and to help them meet the targets set in the physical activity guidelines. Creating a policy that is well written and implemented provides clear and consistent guidelines, as welll as a roadmap for best practice for all to follow.
