Guidance
This guideline covers promoting physical activity for children and young people aged under 18 at home, preschool, school and in the community. It includes raising awareness of the benefits of physical activity, listening to what children and young people want, planning and providing spaces and facilities, and helping families build physical activity into their daily lives.
Recommendations
This guideline includes recommendations on:
- delivering a national campaign and raising awareness about physical activity
- developing physical activity plans
- planning the provision of spaces and facilities
- responding to what children and young people want
- multi-component school and community programmes
- active and sustainable school travel plans
- helping children and families to be active
Who is it for?
- Children’s trusts and services, early years providers, schools and college
- Community and voluntary groups (running sports and other organised activities)
- Government departments
- Local authorities (leisure and related services, transport and planning, regeneration) and local strategic partnerships
- Organisations offering practitioners education and training
- The police
- Primary care trusts
- Private sector providers
- Children, young people, their families and carers and members of the public
Is this guideline up to date?
July 2018: We have found no new evidence that affects the recommendations. For more information, see the surveillance decision.
Guideline development process
How we develop NICE guidelines
This guideline was previously called promoting physical activity for children and young people.
Your responsibility
The recommendations in this guideline represent the view of NICE, arrived at after careful consideration of the evidence available. When exercising their judgement, professionals and practitioners are expected to take this guideline fully into account, alongside the individual needs, preferences and values of their patients or the people using their service. It is not mandatory to apply the recommendations, and the guideline does not override the responsibility to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual, in consultation with them and their families and carers or guardian.
All problems (adverse events) related to a medicine or medical device used for treatment or in a procedure should be reported to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency using the Yellow Card Scheme.
Local commissioners and providers of healthcare have a responsibility to enable the guideline to be applied when individual professionals and people using services wish to use it. They should do so in the context of local and national priorities for funding and developing services, and in light of their duties to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, to advance equality of opportunity and to reduce health inequalities. Nothing in this guideline should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with complying with those duties.
Commissioners and providers have a responsibility to promote an environmentally sustainable health and care system and should assess and reduce the environmental impact of implementing NICE recommendations wherever possible.