Introduction: Summary of the survey

To ensure the content and language of questions is relevant, within the school year 3-11 and parent questionnaire, individual questions are routed based on whether the respondent is a parent, a pupil in school year 3-4 or 5-6 or a pupil in school year 7-11.

The questionnaire asked each pupil about the sports and activities they had taken part in over the previous week, as well as some questions about swimming, riding a bike, volunteering, attitudes towards sport and physical activity, and wellbeing.

The questionnaire also included classification questions such as gender and disability or long-term health conditions.

Teachers were asked about the sports facilities and the PE offer within their school as well as about the PE and sport premium funding, supporting the transition of pupils between primary and secondary school and how the pupils travel to school.

Teachers were also asked about food education, school food standards, participation in PE and active travel to school in order to provide schools with a Healthy Schools Rating.

The parent questionnaire asked questions about the activities that their children had done to supplement the answers that their child in school year 1-2 gave with more detailed information.

For comparability, the academic year 2024-25 (Year 8) questionnaire was kept broadly the same as the academic year 2023-24 (Year 7) version although there were some changes, described in the 'data management and editing' section.

The main change was adaptations and additions to questions on attitudes to provide data for the new physical literacy consensus statement. Changes were also made to questions and images to aid pupils in understanding the questions.

Tables in the Code Book and User Guide show which year groups were asked each question.

For the majority of local authorities, this target was 300 returns. To achieve the required sample, the sampling was conducted in three stages.

First, a sample of 5,652 schools in England was selected from the Get Information about Schools (Edubase) website and supplemented by the 2022-2023 school census.

This sample consisted of up to 10 state primary schools in each local authority, up to 10 state secondary schools in each local authority and 370 independent schools across the whole country.

Each selected school was randomly allocated to one of the three terms in the school year.

In academic year 2024-25 (Year 8), schools were allocated to each term equally in order to achieve equal numbers in each term.

In academic year 2024-25 there were 1,884 schools in the Autumn term, 1,884 in the Spring term and 1,884 in the Summer term.

Second, a sample of year groups was selected within each selected school. This selection was based on the actual available year groups in each school according to the school census in 2023, not on its classification as a primary, secondary or other type of school.

Within each selected school, three year groups were selected. The only exceptions to this were in infant schools or other schools with fewer than three year groups.

Finally, once a school had agreed to take part, they selected one mixed-ability class within each of their selected year groups. This was done by selecting the class in a selected year group which had the last class letter or teacher name in the alphabet.

Each year the guidance alternates whether the first or last class in the alphabet is chosen to avoid burden on the same teacher each year.

This method was introduced in academic year 2021-22 when the selection was based on the class name or teacher name first in the alphabet.

This was a change from previous years (up to 2020-21) of the survey when Kish grids were used for class selection.

Schools were invited to participate prior to the start of the term they were allocated to and had until the end of the term for parent, pupil and teacher completions to be submitted.

Active Partnerships (APs) played a crucial role in recruiting schools to take part in the survey and supporting them through the survey process.

Each term, APs were responsible for contacting schools and directing them to the survey information (developed by Ipsos and Sport England) which was available online, supporting participating schools through the process of selecting appropriate classes, and providing participating schools with school-specific survey URLs in advance of fieldwork.

APs also monitored progress throughout each term and provided regular updates to Sport England.

Pupils in selected classes completed the online survey using computers, smartphones, or tablets either at school or at home. This was usually done during school time, but secondary schools had the option to set it as a homework task.

Teachers and parents took part at school or on their own computers, smartphones, or tablets at home.

Information about the survey was provided to schools, class teachers, pupils and parents in advance of taking part in the survey.

To incentivise schools and thank them for their participation, Sport England offered participating schools credits which can be spent on a range of sporting and activity-based equipment, through ESPO (Eastern Shires Purchasing Organisation). Individual school-based feedback also incentivises schools to take part.

Schools were 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 limited report for schools with responses from year 1-2 pupils).

The weighting takes account of a number of factors that could lead to bias in the results. The achieved sample was weighted to population-level data about children in the relevant age groups.

In addition, school-based weighting was carried out to take account of potential socio-demographic differences in the responding sample (compared with the sample frame, which is the list of schools from which the sample was selected).

In academic year 2022-23 (Year 6) weighting of the teacher data was introduced for the first time and has continued in academic year 2023-24 (Year 7) and academic year 2024-25 (Year 8).

The teacher data for academic years prior to academic year 2022-23 (Year 6) have been weighted (retrospectively) so that where time series for teacher results are presented in the academic year 2024-25 report, all the estimates for every academic year have been weighted.