Torbay Council’s Public Health Team is teaming up with the Herald Express and Golden Mile, sponsored by Premier Sports to promote the Run For Your Life initiative, encouraging children to engage in daily physical activity.

Run For Your Life is a campaign where primary school pupils simply walk, jog or run around a measured mile track within the safety of school grounds. It is a great opportunity to reward personal achievement and encourage pupils to take part in daily physical activity. 

Executive Lead for Health and Wellbeing, Cllr. Jackie Stockman, said: “In Torbay, the majority of children’s physical activity takes place during the school day. Run For Your Life is a safe, simple and measurable initiative to engage children in regular daily physical activity.

“The campaign has proved to encourage regular healthy competition and physical activity across the week, along with health and psychological benefits, it also empowers pupils and develops leadership skills.”

Schools will start ‘running’ after the February half-term and the campaign will continue until 12 July when a celebratory awards event will bring it to a close. Schools who have signed up will have the chance to use the Golden Mile software until January 2019.

The number of overweight children in Torbay, in line with the national trend is escalating year on year. Engaging in physical activity for at least 60 minutes a day can lead to benefits such as improved cardiovascular health and the maintenance of a healthy weight.

For more information on Golden Mile and the Run For Your Life campaign, please visit schools.golden-mile.org.

At Kings Ash Academy throughout the 14 weeks of the Autumn term all pupils in the school took part in the daily mile.  Teachers and Teaching assistants joined the children as they made their way around four laps of the school site to achieve the distance of a mile every morning.  Collectively over the term the pupils from Kings Ash had walked over 26,000 miles!.  The Academy started the Daily Mile as research had shown that 20 minutes of daily physical activity can increase attainment, health and well-being.

With the appointment of a new Executive Headteacher Jessica Humphrey and Head of School Laura Kies Physical Education is now a real focus of the school.  This term with the traditional winter weather the focus has changed to increasing Physical Education.  The appointment of specialist PE teacher Lloyd Blackler and PE assistant Andy Saunders has allowed all the pupils to have a doubling of their PE lessons and a tripling of PE after school clubs.  Mr Blackler said, "we are delighted to be joining the Run for your Life campaign, the benefits of regular exercise is unprecedented and fitter pupils will benefit our lessons and clubs, we are proud to be part of the initiative and look forward to seeing the progress over the coming months.

Kings Ash Academy

Run 4 Your Life is a fantastic initiative.  There is now overwhelming evidence that being more active is beneficial for both your emotional and physical health as well as being sociable and fun. 

In Torbay we want to get as many children active as possible - it will improve their physical health but also help them to concentrate better and help their learning too.

It will also help address an issue, which is concerning me as Torbay’s Director of Public Health, that there are a high number of children in the bay who are overweight and obese. There are many things we need to do to address this but children getting more active is key.

Caroline Dimond, Director of Public Health