In 2012, all eyes will be on the Olympic and Paralymic Games and the legacy promise to get the nation doing more sport.

For children and young people the previous Labour government set the ‘five-hour offer’ target – to give those aged five- to 16-years old access to five hours per week of high-quality sport.

One of the key work strands established in order to deliver the five-hour offer was Sport Unlimited’. Its aim was to bridge the gap between school and community sport and increase opportunities for young people to take part in a wide range of different and engaging activities to find ‘their’ ideal sport.

The programme ran from 2008 to 2011, delivering a £36m programme of Sport England-funded projects, which aimed to engage, retain and sustain semi-sporty young people in more sports participation. It was an important element of the PE and Sport Strategy for Young People and one part of the London 2012 Olympic legacy objectives.

Sport Unlimited delivery – the stats Sport Unlimited was set an ambitious target to retain 900,000 young people in sporting activity by the end of March 2011. Over the three-year period the programme engaged nearly 1.2 million young people and retained almost 82 per cent of these in activity – thereby exceeding the retain target by more than 60,000 young people. Participants were deemed to have been retained if they attended 60 per cent or more of an eight- to 10-week block of sessions – and in total 960,938 young people achieved this measure.

The overall success was equal for male and female participants and for different year groups. This is particularly noteworthy, as Sport Unlimited narrowed the trend of the gender gap in sports participation, demonstrating substantial success in engaging with females. In fact, female retention rates were higher than those for males.

The programme also had a target of sustaining 300,000 young people in activity once their Sport Unlimited sessions came to an end, either by joining a club or participating in informal environments (such as skateparks, BMX tracks, swimming pools and fitness activities). The Sport Industry Research Centre (SIRC) at Sheffield Hallam University undertook a bespoke sustainability study, which combined several different monitoring systems including: exit postcards (4,427 completed), before and after surveys (1,867 completed) and participant tracking with 1,122 individuals. The key findings were as follows:

• Increased importance of sport:
The data from the before and after surveys highlighted that after taking part in the Sport Unlimited programme, 29 per cent of the respondents felt that sport was of greater importance than before they had taken part in the activity sessions.

• Inspiration:
In total,41.7 per cent of participants stated that as a result of the Sport Unlimited sessions they felt inspired and were more likely to attend a sports club than if they had not taken part in the programme.

• Sustained participation:
More than 50 per cent of the 1,122 people that took part in our tracking survey were taking part in more activity than prior to their involvement in Sport Unlimited.

Survey of deliverers
SIRC also conducted a survey of more than 250 programme deliverers (representing more than 40,000 participants), which combined both actual and estimated data. The data showed that 22 per cent of participants went on to join clubs after their initial sessions.

Considering just the actual data (for 12,536 participants) the percentage joining a club was higher at 29 per cent. Add to this the young people who continued participating by other less formal means and the sustain target of 33 per cent is likely to have been met.

How success was achieved
Five critical success factors were identified before and during the programme. These were:

• Joined up delivery
Partnership working, shared goals and cohesively linking young people’s plans into other aspects of the five-hour offer

• Student voice
Finding out what young people want, where and how, and using this intelligence to improve the provision

• Activities Framework
Providing a wide menu of opportunities for participants, which extend beyond conventional activities

• Signposting
Promoting opportunities to young people and signposting and supporting participants into ‘exit routes’ from the programme into other opportunities

• Sustainability
Ensuring all funded projects had plans for how participation would be sustained

Joined-up delivery
There was wide representation of non-sport partners cohesively planning and incorporating various sporting projects and activities into their delivery, such as the Rurban project – delivered by Herts Sports Partnership, Child UK and Pro-Action.

Rurban gave youth clubs in the area a new lease of life by utilising qualified sports coaches to deliver multi-sports activity sessions. An array of new opportunities and activities were offered environments where previously an informal game of football was the only sport on offer.

Partnership working with NGBs was extremely innovative, with several governing bodies offering hybrid and adapted versions of sports to meet the needs of semi-sporty young people – for example, fit rugby, in partnership with the Rugby Football Union (RFU), which was organised in Tees Valley.

This project provided intensive fitness-based sessions, which incorporated drills and skills presented via fun games.

Student Voice
Community Sports Partnerships (CSPs) committed to ensuring that young people in their regions were consulted with and listened to. This consultation not only helped to engage young people in activity but also helped to retain young people, as they were taking part in activities that they really wanted to do. Sport Unlimited has demonstrated that gathering evidence of demand and what young people want is essential to enable a strategic approach to planning and programming.

The top 10 sports overall are shown below, however, our consultations highlighted significant variations between genders, local areas and among different age groups, reinforcing the need for local data in order to shape local delivery.

SIRC supported four CSPs to conduct a detailed consultation during year one of Sport Unlimited. Within these CSPs the percentage of people retained increased from 73 per cent in year one to 81 per cent in year three which is an increase of eight percentage points, compared with the national picture, where there was a one percentage point increase. These improvements in performance highlight the potential impact of finding out what young people want and shaping delivery accordingly.

Activities Framework
The programme also helped to facilitate the creation of brand new sports and activities. More than 100 alternative physical activities were delivered alongside traditional sports.

These included adaptations of traditional sports, which were designed to appeal to semi-sporty young people and to those who are deterred from participating on a regular basis due to the nature of traditional sports delivery.

Signposting/exit routes
CSPs and deliverers worked hard to develop strong links with established clubs and organisations, and to support the development of new exit routes.

The use of external coaches (from community or club settings) in school environments was an effective tool in signposting young people and supporting their transition from Sport Unlimited programmes into community environments and sports clubs.

A familiar face or venue helped to break down barriers, so many programmes started in a school venue and then transferred to a community environment part way through, promoting retention and longer-term sustainability.

Sustainability
Components which helped to ensure that projects had sustainable legacy impacts included: partnership working; capacity-building through the purchase and transferral of equipment to clubs/exit routes; incentives to join clubs; opportunities to train as junior leaders and volunteers and careful planning of the transition from the school/project to the club setting – making it as natural and welcoming as possible for participants and having strategic objectives for long term development.

In a nutshell…
There’s no doubt that Sport Unlimited was a successful programme, playing its part in contributing to legacy objectives by exceeding the ambitious targets for the retention of young people and laying the foundations for sustained increases in sports participation.

The government funding was a catalyst, which enabled a range of providers to supply relevant subsidised opportunities. Sport England and the CSPs successfully managed the distribution of funding to deliverers and a range of partnerships was established to deliver activities to specific groups of young people, while a wide range of different and innovative activities were promoted.

The success factors identified form part of the fundamental recipe of what will work to engage young people and enhance their enjoyment of activity.

See the Sport England website for the full evaluation report: http://lei.sr?a=w5y8J