Linking Physical Education with Local Sport Organizations: Implementation of an "Active School Community"

The main purpose of the active school communities project was to act as a starting point for more active school communities throughout seven countries across Europe by strengthening the links between community sport organizations and local schools and provide a low-cost solution to improve physical education and physical activity in schools. Further, opportunities for cooperation were fostered by creating new partnerships between stakeholders that already separately work at the community level to encourage children to move more. Therefore, toolkits were created by the active school communities ERASMUS+ project to promote collaborations between the field of education together with grassroots sport sectors and sport clubs. The aim of this study was a pilot evaluation of these toolkits. A total of 38 members of local sport organizations, 34 members of local schools and 5 national coordinators participated in three parts of the evaluation study. In sum, there are ambivalent results regarding the three toolkits, but the majority of participants supported the aim of the project to create and improve more active school communities. Finally, future recommendations are discussed.