National School Sport Champion Dame Kelly Holmes will join forces with Norwich Union and the Youth Sport Trust to help “bored” teenage girls get involved in sport through the GirlsActive initiative.

The double Olympic champion will help encourage girls to enjoy more sporting activity on their own terms, following research by Norwich Union and the Youth Sport Trust that showed 80 per cent of girls would like to become more physically active but don’t for a variety of reasons, including a view that the sport they take part in at school is “boring”.

The research also revealed some students also suffer from a lack of encouragement from their parents.

“From the extensive research conducted by both Norwich Union and the Youth Sport Trust, we know that the key age for girls dropping out of sport is the early teens,” Kelly said.

“I want to delve deeper to understand the key reasons why this is the case and work with the girls themselves to make a real difference in the delivery of sporting activity designed for them.”

Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Tessa Jowell added: “We know that for the vast majority of young women, feeling fit and looking fit is an important part of feeling good about themselves. But for lots of girls, sport is a grudging school time activity, not a habit for life. Kelly Holmes’ role as school sport champion is to change that.”

Kelly will host three Norwich Union GirlsActive roadshows in November, for representatives from 75 school sport partnerships across England, where girls will generate ideas on what they would change in their own schools to make sport more appealing.

“It’s no use imposing sporting solutions on today’s kids as they have so much choice nowadays. We need to find out what will engage them and then provide it,” Kelly said.

“It could be something as simple as the PE kit, or the changing or shower rooms. I want to target the girls who are not currently interested in sport and understand the reasons why so that we can look to address them.”

“Sport is so important for children and teenagers, but it needs to be fun for them to be engaged. The key is to find out how to make sporting activity in school fun for those girls who don’t currently participate, and then to work with schools to create a step change in the way traditional sporting activities are delivered to girls as well as exploring new alternatives,” Youth Sport Trust chief executive Steve Grainger said.

Following the roadshows, three school sport partnerships will be selected for a Norwich Union GirlsActive personal ‘makeover’ visit by Kelly, while representatives from the partnerships will be invited to discuss the findings with government representatives to help the government achieve its school sport targets.

The target set for 2010, two years prior to the London Olympics, is for all children will be involved in at least four hours of high quality PE and sport each week.

Norwich Union GirlsActive events:
2 November - PGL Travel Boreatton Park centre, Shropshire
9 November - PGL Travel Marchants Hill centre, Hindhead, Surrey
14 November - Catterick Garrison, Hipswell, North Yorkshire

Related links:
National School Sport Champion