Active Schools

Leadership

Our Sports Leadership Programme is designed to provide high quality, regular, support, training and development for young people who are committed to volunteering in sport and physical activity within their school and/or community.

The programme has bronze, silver and gold levels within it and participants can complete as many levels as they wish. There is very little written work and the emphasis is on developing leadership skills through participation while working in small groups to deliver activity.

The primary focus of the programme is on developing leadership skills and not sports performance.

Each young leader will be required to complete the pre-determined volunteering hours at each level. Within this time, as part of the programme, they will spend time leading sessions. Hours will be agreed with your Active Schools Coordinator and support will be given during your time volunteering.

A maximum of two hours volunteering can be logged each week. These must be completed at an Active Schools club or one of its partner clubs.

The skills and experience that participants gain upon completion of each level of the Pupil Leadership Programme will be recognised by North East Scotland College as an alternative to the entry requirements for:

• NCFE Level 2 Sport, Exercise and Fitness (Bronze Award)
• NCFE Level 3 Sport & Exercise Science (Silver Award)
• HND Coaching & Developing Sport (Gold Award)

Extracurricular

Sport and physical activities take place before school, during lunchtime and after school.

Delivered by school staff, volunteers, coaches or senior pupils, each school will have a different offer available to the children and young people. To find out more contact the Active Schools Coordinator for your child or young person’s school.

Festivals and Events

Opportunities for children and young people to represent their school as part of a team or play against individuals from other schools across the city.

Our festivals and events give children and young people an opportunity to meet new people and practise their skills learned through extracurricular activities.

Kit for All

The Kit for All project is a nationwide initiative, which has various representations from areas all over Scotland.

The project’s overarching aim is to reduce and remove any participation barriers for school children in sport and physical activity by providing them with free sports kits.

Active Girls

The Active Girls Committee is a city-wide group which has young female representation from all Aberdeen City secondary schools.

The group’s main aim is to reduce the inequality gap between girls and boys’ participation in sport and physical activity throughout Aberdeen city, levelling the playing field for everyone.

Supported Memberships

Get active for Less is our discounted access scheme, created to break down the barrier of price and provide more people with the opportunity to take part in sport and physical activity.

Active Schools Assistants

Our Active Schools Assistants help increase the participation levels of inactive and hard to reach groups of children and young people in sport and physical activity by delivering high quality coaching sessions and ensuring more opportunities are available within curricular and extracurricular settings.

ProActive Minds

The ProActive Minds programme is a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) between Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU) and Sport Aberdeen, created to embed the principles of sport and exercise psychology in Aberdeen schools.

Knowledge Transfer Partnerships link forward thinking businesses with the UK’s world class knowledge bases to deliver innovative projects led by inspired graduates.

SPACE

SPACE (Supported Physical Activity for Care Experienced) is an innovative, award-winning project that supports care experienced children and young people within Aberdeen.

Using the positive benefits of sport and physical activity the SPACE project helps children and young people learn, develop and achieve.

Young Carers

Young carers make an incredible contribution to their families and local communities.

We work with targeted groups, utilising the positive physical and mental impact that participating in sport can bring about to create opportunities, inspire people and change lives.

Young carers are one of the targeted groups of young people that our team work with, in partnership with Barnardo’s Aberdeen Young Carers Service.

Active Schools Aberdeen facilitates a range of planned activities in both school and community settings to help encourage children and young people to participate in sport and physical activity.

A huge part of our workforce who help us to achieve this are volunteers and we are always looking for new volunteers to support these activities.

Our volunteer opportunities are wide ranging, from delivering extracurricular sports sessions and helping to coordinate events, to supervising activities, supporting a lead coach or helping to take the registers.

We offer training and development opportunities and look to support volunteers as part of our coaching team.

Most importantly, you will be part of a team that plays an important role in improving the health and confidence of Aberdeen’s children and young people. If you are as passionate as we are about getting young people in Aberdeen active, then there is a role for you!

At the start of your volunteer journey with us, there will be some paperwork to fill out and some online training modules to complete. These are mandatory before anyone can start volunteering with Active Schools, as they form part of our Sport Aberdeen insurance requirements. A summary of these can be seen below.

1. PVG Disclosure Check
2. Induction and Personal Information Form
3. Child Protection Training
4. Ready to Start Volunteering

Not all of these steps may be required for some volunteer types. This would be explained in discussion with your Active Schools Coordinator.

This short video provides a look at the different people who can volunteer with Active Schools.

To find out how you could benefit from volunteering for the Active Schools programme please contact activeschools@sportaberdeen.co.uk or find your local coordinator.

If you have already begun your journey as an Active Schools Volunteer, please find a range of resources below.

Resource Library

During the Covid pandemic a variety of resources were developed to support a number of children who were unable to access and participate in regular sport and physical activity.

The packs make the delivery of sessions simple and effective and you can continue to access them from the Resource Library.

Active Schools has developed various resource packs to support school staff in the delivery of both curricular and extracurricular sessions.

These packs are designed to make the delivery of sessions simple yet effective. There are a mixture of equipment and non-equipment based activities, and ASN adaptations on selected resources.

Workshops

Continuous professional development.

For workshop queries, please contact our Lead Schools Coordinator for Projects, Sarah Fraser.

To contact the Active Schools team, please call 01224 270990 or contact your dedicated Active Schools Coordinator directly from the following options.

Each Active Schools Coordinator works with an associated school group (ASG), made up of a secondary school and its feeder primary schools.