Table 2 Summary of domains
From: A qualitative exploration of multi-stakeholder perspectives of before-school physical activity
Students | Parents | School staff | External providers | Experts | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Domains and subdomains | Example quotes | |||||
Domain 1: Perceived value of before-school physical activity | ||||||
Cognitive, behavioural and wellbeing impacts | Pa7 (primary school): I’ve noticed the main benefit is their behaviour. They seem to be a lot better behaved after some physical activity…for my eight year old, his ability to sit down and focus is improved. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Relationship impacts | EP3: It is the perfect place. The schools are underutilised for physical activity and movement before school…But for secondary students, they want to stay and hang around with their mates and friends from school, why not do it at school…it’s safer, there’s lots of areas to play, and they’re with their friends. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
School attendance impacts | S11 (boy, secondary school): They were trying to increase those numbers in the junior years where people weren’t coming to school on Friday mornings…It sort of encouraged them to come earlier, to get out of bed a bit earlier and get to school quicker. So yeah, I think it was successful. | ✓ | ✓ | |||
Extension of school day for inclusive and safe engagement | Pr4 (primary and secondary school): I don’t see it as babysitting. I think it’s an extension of the school day…But I also see co-curricular and I always stress it’s ‘co’, it’s not ‘extra’. It’s co-curricular because it’s part of the whole learning experience. And you look at the skills these students acquire as a result of their engagement [in physical activity programs]. E1: In the north of here [Western Australia] and Queensland as well, you can’t do much physical activity at all…beyond 11 o’clock, it’s just too hot. So it’s a perfect time of day to be doing that. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Alignment with parent work schedules | Pa9 (primary and secondary school): Having something to get them to, is just such a huge benefit…They’re the days I can get to an 8:30 meeting…rather than sort of push them out the car at a quarter to nine. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Domain 2: Factors influencing before-school physical activity | ||||||
Individual | ||||||
Attitudes, motivation, and enjoyment (+, −) | S7 (boy, secondary school): My closest friends are all at like, the top level in football…They are really motivated to get better at the sport, and so they do stuff in the morning as well, just to get better. But I’d say for most people, it’s just like, “I don’t want to get up”. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Confidence and competence (+, −) | EP3: Because it was focused on athletics, and it was sport-specific, you cut out a lot of children that may not necessarily feel confident or competent to run around an aths [athletics] track or to throw a javelin…The more confident ones stuck around, which is a common storyline, isn’t it? | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Sleeping patterns and energy levels (+, −) | S8 (girl, primary school): I think that it could be like a little bit later, instead of being like, so early, because you might not want to, like get up that early, or you could be a sleep-inner…it maybe could be like, maybe at least half an hour later. So that you actually have time to get ready for school, wake up, be ready to go and just not be tired. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
Availability and use of time (+, −) | S6 (girl, secondary school): I would never do anything else in the morning…I have training or work and stuff or homework in the afternoon to do. But usually in the morning, I don’t really do anything else…it’s just easy. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
Family and peers | ||||||
Family home and work routines (+, −) | EP3: Parents were really happy with the program, it was just, they were thinking it was too early. So it was busy in the morning, particularly primary school kids…You’ve got to get them up, you’ve got to organise them. And, suddenly there’s been homework that has not been completed that they told you that they did do and they didn’t do it. And so it’s a bit of a scramble. Then you’ve got parents going to work. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
Financial cost (+, −) | Pa10 (primary school): There’s a cost to it each time as well. And I can just imagine, I’ve got one, but if you’ve got three kids, and they’re all doing something… | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
Parent involvement and support (+, −) | Pa3 (primary school): I take my hat off to people…who are able to run these programs, but within my life, I don’t necessarily have the capacity to be contributing to those types of things frequently, maybe occasionally. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Transport to school (−) | T6 (secondary school): Transport’s an issue…Some girls told us that “I just can’t get there because my parents can’t get me there"…They’d have to rely on public transport, school buses, to get there on time, which wasn’t possible. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||
Breakfast provision (−) | Pa8 (primary and secondary school): What can I do in terms of making sure…they have enough to eat or drink before the actual school day starts? And that’s always been a challenge…making sure that they’re full of energy, they’re not sort of depleted by the time morning tea comes around. | ✓ | ||||
Social influence (+) | S1 (boy, secondary school): [There is] more time to meet up with friends, and you can have more time in the day to talk then, because I normally arrange with friends to go to school early. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Peer leadership (+) | T7 (primary school): The big guys take the little guys around, and it’s just, it is lovely to see. And for some of the children, it is a highlight of their day…Sometimes it’s the naughtiest children that take the biggest pleasure out of showing something that they can do. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
School | ||||||
Availability of opportunities (+, −) | S9 (girl, primary school): The only option is to like either go in the library and sit in air conditioning and like, read or go on the iPads or something, and only being able to play handball. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Access to facilities and equipment (+, −) | Pa7 (primary school): What I would really love is just access to the playgrounds, for say, 15 min before the bell goes, so the kids can just run around and burn off some energy…Unfortunately, that’s not allowed. So the kids tend to run around in a space they’re not supposed to be running around in. And I don’t think that’s good for anyone, the teachers or the students, or parents. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Availability of staff supervision (+, −) | Pr4 (primary and secondary school): [A barrier] is what it might place on your own teaching staff, because by and large, from a duty of care point of view, it’s ideal to have a teaching staff member on premises, and that’s a challenge…When you’ve got the right people, it work works well. Pr2 (secondary school): That girls gym program, at the moment that teacher does it all of her own, you know, passion, and the like…If programs like that work, though, again, I think if schools can look to resource that and support that teacher and/or the program…you can then support that program to keep running…Otherwise, relying on teachers’ goodwill, I find over time…they’ll have other priorities and things they need to move on to. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
School priorities, timetabling and leadership support (+, −) | Pa2 (primary school): So we did initially have a principal who was a little hesitant about it [a parent-run PA program]. But then we had a change of principal, and it was all systems go. Pr2 (secondary school): …there’s award agreements on teaching loads and things, but duties are generally up to principal’s discretion, so that we can supervise safely…It probably depends on the school and the priorities and how tight things are as to whether that’s [adding additional supervision duties] reasonable or not in different kind of school settings. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
Breakfast provision (+, −) | Pa1 (primary and secondary school): I used to love going to cross country training…we would get for $1, a croissant, and a cup of fruit salad, which I just thought was fantastic. And that definitely helped me get out of bed as a teenager. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Incentives and rewards (+) | T1 (primary school): It needs to be incentivised…We run prizes and things for people who run the furthest distance at ‘hundred kilometre club’…We’ve been lucky to get almost 100% participation for several years now. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
School size (−) | Pa1 (primary and secondary school): I think the size of the school could be a barrier…With our school being so small…there’s going to be less availability for kids to actually turn up. | ✓ | ✓ | |||
Uniform requirements (+, −) | E1: For teenage girls in particular, uniform comes into it hugely…Having choice and some flexibility for girls in uniform has a huge impact on participating in those kinds of things too. | ✓ | ✓ | |||
Community environment | ||||||
Availability of opportunities (+, −) | EP2: [In our before-school community family activity program] the parents can then get fit…It’s also a really great bonding time for parents to have with children, potentially the parent that goes off to work for a full day and isn’t home till after dinner time with children…So there’s some really great opportunities. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Parents and citizens associations (+, −) | Pa2 (primary school): We [the P&C] began a subcommittee a few years ago, called the active living and sport subcommittee, because a few of us as parents were a little surprised when we got to school…expecting our children to have more sporting opportunities than what the school offered…We put a few proposals together for the school and a before school ‘kilometre club’ was one of those. And that was the key one that really, we were able to implement quite quickly, quite easily. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
Community partnerships and engagement (+) | Pr1 (secondary school): One of the ways to maximise the success…is to involve the broader community…If you’ve got, ‘Mr. Smith’, who represented Australia, Queensland, New South Wales, at some sport at some level, and he’s involved with the school, either through the P and C, or not, he might be a key to that sustainability, because of his passion…It doesn’t matter what really happens with the staff at the school as they cycle through, the community drive it. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Safety (+,−) | Pa7 (primary school): It feels dangerous to be riding bikes near the school…How do you encourage your children to actively transport to school if you don’t feel like that’s a safe choice? | ✓ | ||||
Accessibility to school (+, −) | Pr2 (secondary school): Some schools are connected to train lines…we’re not, we’re quite a way from the train station, so if the kids aren’t within walking distance or riding distance it can be hard for them. They come from a fairly broad area to get to us…It’s very hard for them to either get here before school. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
Policy | ||||||
Curriculum (−) | Pr1 (secondary school): If it’s going to be important, we have to measure it. And what we’ve been asked to do by our systems…is that NAPLAN and the production of student results is far, far more important now than anything else, so measuring the performance of school sport becomes very problematic in schools and it gets put often in the too hard basket. | ✓ | ||||
Conditions and expectations of teacher employment (+, −) | Pr1 (secondary school): The Catholic, independent and government sectors right across Australia have awards…they’ve got rules about how many teaching minutes they have…But that’s jurisdictionally based, so in Queensland, it’s different to New South Wales, it’s different to Victoria. | ✓ | ✓ | |||
Domain 3: Strategies for schools to support before-school physical activity | ||||||
Program design and implementation | ||||||
Provide a range of context-specific activities | E2: Type of activity becomes all important with the high school, given that flexible model of what they’re into…Gym-like stuff, or Pilates or something that kind of is not sport, but it’s a recreational, cool thing. And I like that idea of linking it in with something that’s of relevance. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Foster engagement and enjoyment | EP2: Everything about our business and our program is very much play-based and fun, so that the kids don’t know that they’re essentially doing exercise or getting those minutes in that they need to. So for us, it’s about really employing the right coaches. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Make programs realistic, sustainable, and accessible | Pa2 (primary school): Really key has to be sustainability…It’s great to promise the world to start with, but can we realistically keep that going every week?…That was a focus for us in just the ‘keep it simple’ philosophy. Because we needed to make it sustainable, that it didn’t require 10 volunteers, it only required two. And it didn’t require a lot of resources and a lot of different things, it only required one bucket’s worth of gear, and so that was easy for us to pass around for whoever was the coordinator for any given week. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Empower students through leadership and decision-making | E2: …the student leadership group, meaning year six leaders or year twelves…just in terms of them helping deliver programs. And also, there’s also this link to that that house spirit, because most of them might be house leaders, and they can round up a bit of morale boosting stuff there around house competitions. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Provide participation incentives and recognition | Pa2 (primary school): We wanted to give the kids a bit of incentive…We would give them a rubber band around their wrist to count their laps, and we would keep a tally of that…we did start to give prizes once they hit milestones…A little certificate or mentioned on assembly, when they were reaching the milestones. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
Facilities and resources | ||||||
Provide supervision | S8 (primary school): At our school, a teacher comes out at 8:30 and they let us know that we can play handball. Maybe the teacher could like come out at like eight o’clock instead of 8:30, so if people arrive before 8:30, when a teacher comes at eight o’clock they can play instead of having to sit down and wait. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
Provide access to equipment and facilities | S6 (secondary school): We have heaps of like ovals and basketball courts and stuff, but you’d have to bring your own ball. So maybe, like, just letting us borrow [the equipment]. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||
Provide access to food | Pr1(secondary school): When I implemented a cricket and a rugby league program…we simply just had a conversation with the tuckshop or the canteen, and they opened a little bit early and provided additional food…It was very simple. It wasn’t a problem because the P and C ran the canteen, so it was just an easy thing to do. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
Provide additional transport options | T3 (secondary school): How do we then offer an earlier bus route? If that was something that was holding students back from getting there. What sort of stakeholders need to be considered for that to happen? | ✓ | ||||
Community engagement | ||||||
Encourage community involvement and partnerships | T1 (primary school): [Teachers and parents] like to come along and join in…We really encourage that, they can see the benefit it’s having for their kids, they can see their kids being out, fit and having fun with their friends before school…Those kinds of things make it as easy as possible for large numbers of people to be involved and make it as easy as possible for teachers to run those activities without creating this huge burden. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Engage parents and citizens associations | E1: If you’ve got a health and wellbeing committee, that’s who you want on board. Sometimes if you have one champion, they leave and the whole thing falls apart. So it’s trying to engage a few people… When the burden of administering that program becomes too much, there’s other people that they can call on. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||
Communicate benefits to stakeholders | E1: Having buy in, not only from the parents, but from the phys edder, from the principal, from classroom teachers is really important. And that can usually be done by selling other benefits…The kids have got rid of all that energy, that behaviour management is going to improve, and their early morning learning is going to improve because they’ve got all that out of their way, and they can concentrate a bit better. | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
Support for facilitators | ||||||
Provide opportunities for training and development | T1 (primary school): And that entailed going around to different regions and getting people together, talking to them about the importance of physical activity and getting buy-in from principals and from staff and from parents, and then giving a whole range of different ideas that have worked in other places…I think that kind of stuff really works…It made a huge impact. And there are still schools in our region, who continue those activities now, like our school, and many others, because of that initiative. | ✓ | ||||
Provide support and recognition | T5 (secondary school): [When considering providing before-school opportunities] I always think, “well hang on, if I do that in the morning, and then go straight into a four-on day”, and then as a PE teacher, most of us will then have afternoon training or our own training afterwards…I get to 10pm before I get a break, starting early. So often, I’ll try and put it on days where you’ve got a spare period first…This year, just gone, I got taken off the home class line, which was amazing, because then I was putting lots on in the morning, because then even that 15 min of when everyone else is in home class is enough time…to reset and be ready for the day, as opposed to obviously all the equipment and packing up and everything that comes with being responsible for the space you’re in. | ✓ | ✓ | |||