Sport England has launched the College Sport Makers (CSM) initiative - a five-year programme aimed at improving sporting opportunities for students in further education.

A £17m investment will fund 150 new jobs for full-time sports professionals at colleges across the UK. So far, 117 colleges have successfully bid for the funding.

CSM will help individual sports to market their opportunities to students as well as linking colleges with community sports clubs, running leagues and sports groups and offering coaching for certain sports.

Every sports professional employed under the scheme will be expected to help hundreds of students to make sport a bigger part of their lives.

Richard Lewis, chair of Sport England, said: "Too many teenagers drop out of sport when they leave school, as it gets squeezed by competing demands like studying, work and relationships.

"We want College Sport Makers to remind young people how much fun sport is and to help them build it into their schedules so they develop a sporting habit for life."

Sport England has also invited colleges across the country to bid for a share of £3m of additional funding to improve the sport they are able to offer.

Grants of between £30,000 and £150,000 will be offered to help colleges to run new sport projects.

The investment in CSM is part of Sport England's five-year, £1bn Youth and Community Strategy that aims to continue the growth in sports participation that has seen the number of people playing sport every week reach 15.28 million, an increase of 1.3 million since 2005/6.