Sporting activities aligned to the This Girl Can campaign have this year included more young female participants in physical activity than ever before in the Spar Lancashire School Games.
Seven hundred girls from primary and secondary schools across the county have participated in a range of events in the 2024/25 Spar Lancashire School Games this academic year, in what marks the tenth version of This Girl Can campaign since its development by Sport England in 2015.
The scheme was designed to tackle the gender gap in activity, promoting a change in “how females of all ages, abilities and backgrounds think and feel about exercise, empowering them to exercise with increased confidence to develop regular exercise habits that build resilience.”
Within the games, specific Girls Active events have included dance, glow dodgeball, rollerblading, climbing and bouldering, orienteering, padel, volleyball, fitness tennis and spinning.
Run by Active Lancashire and the School Games Organiser Network, the event has been sponsored by Spar through its association with James Hall & Co. Ltd since 2006.
The games are delivered in Lancashire Coastal, Central and Pennine clusters and are aligned to the local needs of each region. In 2023/24, they engaged 26,000 children in sport and activities across the county through 27 feature events and competitions.
Andy Clark, schools partnership and skills officer at Active Lancashire, said: “We’ve enjoyed another fantastic year of Girls Active events within the Spar Lancashire School Games, and our biggest yet.
“What we tend to find with school age girls here in Lancashire is a lack of participation in sport and we’ve been working hard to improve that. We work with a lot of underprivileged children and the low participation could be due to inequality and the cost of accessing sport, but there’s also a huge problem of confidence, and particularly female body image when exercising.
“With Girls Active, we’ve specifically targeted those hard-to-reach young females in Lancashire across our three delivery areas with a broad programme of activities to great effect, and we look forward to building on that in the years ahead.”
Nic Greaves, head of division for physical education at Parklands High School in Chorley, said: “It was fantastic as their PE teacher to see pupils being successful, building their confidence and resilience, and most importantly, being active. The girls really enjoyed themselves, and I also had feedback from many parents about their children enjoying themselves and they think it’s wonderful.
“One that really stuck out was a parent whose daughter had sent them photos of her from a Girls Active event happy, confident and with some new friends at a time when she had been struggling with her mental health.”
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