Live Borders’ Active Schools Programme a Huge Success

The Active Schools programme in the Scottish Borders is delivered by Live Borders and supports children and young people to be healthier, happier, and stronger through participation in extracurricular activity (breakfast, lunchtime, after school, evening), school sport competition, festivals and events.

The hard work of the Active Schools team at Live Borders has resulted in performance for last term to reach pre Covid-19 levels for the first time since the pandemic.

5751 individual children and young people from P1-S6 engaged in Active Schools led and supported activity. This represents a 6% rise (an increase of 800 pupils) for the equivalent period in 2022 and represents 39% of the school roll.

The total annual national average in 22/23 was 38% and the Live Borders Active Schools team have achieved this in just one term.

Pupils made 72,915 total visits to 294 blocks of activity in term one, a 3% increase on 22/23.

Active Schools in the Borders has a 50/50% split in boys and girls taking part in activity. This is hugely encouraging from the point of view of females participating in activity. Across the rest of Scotland, boys participation tends to dominate.

Live Borders also had 458 volunteers engaged in the network of delivering opportunities with parents, teachers, senior pupils, club coaches, janitors and college students.

Graeme Murdoch, Head of Active Communities for Live Borders stated:

“This is a fantastic achievement for the Active Schools team. The value of partnership we have with Scottish Borders Council and sportscotland to enable the programme is demonstrated by the impact and reach of our activity, and how important it is to making our young people healthier happier and stronger”.

Carol Hamilton, Executive Member for Developing our Children and Young People at Scottish Borders Council added:

“Live Borders are to be congratulates on the success of the Active Schools programme. This growing offering of extracurricular activities is so important for young people, and reaches children in the most deprived areas of the region.

“The programme develops an infrastructure of coaches and volunteers, supporting school to club and community links, and uses the power of major events and role models to inspire lifelong involvement in sport and physical activity. It is great to see we have as many girls as boys participating and I look forward to seeing the ongoing success of the Active Schools programme.”