Neath Port Talbot top of the league for kids hooked on sport

Children in Neath Port Talbot are leading the way in Wales when it comes to taking part in sport, with more than half ‘hooked on sport’ by taking part in some sort of activity more than three times a week.

Data from the Sport Wales School Sport Survey 2015 shows that the rates of both boys (58.2%) and girls (51.2%) participation were higher than for any other area of Wales, giving a table-topping overall figure of 54.7% for children aged 3-11 ‘hooked on sport’.

The all-Wales averages are 51.5% for boys, 44.4% for girls and 48% overall.

The new figures, which form part of a survey of over 116,000 Welsh school children making it the biggest survey of children carried out in the UK to date, show an increase in sports participation across the board with significant increases being reported for those pupils less likely to be hooked.

Neath Port Talbot Council’s Active Young People team has worked alongside its partners to develop and promote new community-based sporting opportunities, with a lot of work undertaken with schools and groups such as Communities First, Street Games and the Youth Service to address inequalities in sports take-up.

This approach has resulted in a strong focus on underrepresented groups such as BME and deprived communities and children with disabilities. It has also been particularly effective in delivering new opportunities for women and girls, with the creation of a successful netball league and club structure and more recently with the US girls project, an NPT initiative developed by the Active Young People team with the sole aim of increasing participation by girls aged 14-20 years.

This partnership working within Neath Port Talbot has been hailed as one of the reasons for the county borough’s success and for its continuing improved performance despite budgetary cuts within many organisations.

Leader of Neath Port Talbot Council, Cllr Ali Thomas said: “I am delighted that Neath Port Talbot has again been recognised as number one in Wales for children taking part in sport three or more times a week and is also top of the table for girls participation. A great deal of credit for this must go to our Active Young People team and all the partner organisations working alongside them in the county borough”.

“It has been a real team effort to provide and promote as many opportunities as possible for local children to get hooked on sport. The strong links we have with Neath Port Talbot College, Ospreys, Swansea City, Aberavon RFC, Celtic Leisure, Sport Wales, sport’s national governing bodies, numerous charity and community organisations and of course local schools have been vital to this success”.

“Two years ago Neath Port Talbot was number one in Wales with 46% of our children hooked on sport. That we are now at 55% is testament to this partnership approach, improving our delivery and performance at a time of declining resources”.

“I am particularly pleased with the rates of girls taking part as tackling the inequalities in sports participation has been a key priority and the work to create opportunities for girls and other underrepresented groups is clearly paying off. This is a great achievement for Neath Port Talbot”.