Hopscotch to lead Sport England PE campaign

Sport England said it was expanding its This Girl Can campaign, which targeted adult women, into schools through a lottery-funded £1.5m digital schools’ platform called Studio You.

Hopscotch will lead a consortium of four agencies working on the platform’s design and delivery. The other three agencies involved are youth consultancy Livity, digital build agency OnToast and research agency Childwise.

Studio You will provide a free digital library of alternative workouts helping girls to feel more comfortable in school PE settings and to engage with physical activity. This includes disciplines such as yoga, boxing, dance and Pilates.

The platform will be piloted in 20 schools across autumn 2020, with plans for a national rollout in February 2021.

Julie Noble, founder of Hopscotch, said: “A negative experience of PE at school can set a damaging blueprint for an inactive life, but a positive experience can instil confidence and empowerment and give girls a lifelong love of physical activity and the benefits it brings.

“With the creation of this platform, we wanted to reframe physical activity as an enjoyable part of everyday life that is for everyone – not just the preserve of naturally sporty young people”.

Jayne Molyneux, director of children and young people at Sport England, said: “In focus groups girls who had disengaged from school sports used words like ‘competitive’, ‘forced’, ‘stressy’ and ‘repetitive’ to describe their PE lessons.

“The Studio You platform will help teachers challenge those perceptions by re-injecting all-important fun, choice and ownership into the PE experience for those that don’t naturally gravitate towards it.”