To incentivise schools and thank them for their participation, Sport England offered participating schools credits, which can be spent on a range of sporting, wellbeing, healthy eating and activity-based equipment, through ESPO (Eastern Shires Purchasing Organisation).
Sampled schools which take part and have at least 30 pupil responses (or responses from at least half of the number of those in sampled classes if this totals less than 30) are given 10 credits (worth about £100).
In schools where school year 1-2 parents are surveyed, schools earn an extra credit (worth about £10) for every parent response.
Sport England work with ESPO in order to administer the incentive scheme. Sport England pass on details of qualifying schools to ESPO on a weekly basis (or at the end of term for schools with school year 1-2 pupils), who then take over the administration of the incentives by contacting schools by both email and by post with a letter telling the school the number of credits they have achieved, a copy of the incentive brochure from which to select their item/s and information on how to redeem their credits.
Response reports provided by Ipsos were used to provide evidence of participation for the administration of the incentives by Sport England.
Schools were also eligible for a school-level report if at least 25 valid responses for the activity questions were received (for a full report) or 25 valid responses on attitudes or wellbeing only (for a shorter limited report for schools with enough responses from year 1-2 pupils but not from parents and pupils in year 3-6).
The report covered key activity measures overall and for during and outside normal school hours and for boys and girls. Data on the most participated in activities at that school was also included as well as data on swimming.
Findings on wellbeing, resilience, trust and physical literacy formed part of the report. The school report also included a section which provided comparison for the school against their previous results, if that school had previously taken part in the survey.
If a school had previously taken part in the survey more than once, their current results were compared to their results from the most recent time they had previously taken part. This comparison section was newly introduced in the academic year 2020-21 (Year 4) school report and has continued in subsequent academic years including 2024-25 (Year 8)
A notes page highlighted the limitations of the data within a school, because it is based on small numbers and limited year groups.
The reports also contained a page covering the Healthy Schools Rating Scheme. This is a scheme launched by the Department for Education (DfE). The scheme draws on the school’s responses to questions covering food education, school food standards, participation in PE and active travel to school taken from the teacher questionnaire.
This rating scheme is designed to recognise the positive actions that schools are taking around healthy eating and physical activity and to encourage schools to reflect on useful next steps.
These reports were prepared by Ipsos and sent to schools individually by email. Schools which had opted into the survey received a school level report but were not eligible for the equipment-based incentive.
Small schools and those with low numbers of pupils who struggled to reach the number of responses required for a school-level report received amended versions of the school-level report.
These were produced in-house at Sport England based on the same templates as those used for the school-level reports and were based on counts rather than rates.
These reports were introduced from academic year 2018-19 onwards and are distributed to small schools later than the main school-level reports.