Experience around the world has shown, and continues to show, that sport can inspire and engage young people like few other things can. Sport is an international language that can assist in building bridges and breaking down barriers between individuals, communities and nations, particularly among young people.

When we think and talk of ‘young people’, however, we need to bear in mind that young people are not a homogenous group. Each is an individual who will grow and develop in their own way at their own pace. This will be influenced by a range of factors, including their personal circumstances, experiences, culture and surrounding environment. Social class, home environment and economic status have all been shown to contribute to a young person’s likelihood to participate in physical activity. The level of participation by young people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds is relatively limited compared to their higher socioeconomic counterparts. Participation is also influenced by personal characteristics such as gender, ethnicity and disability.

International evidence suggests that participation in sport and structured physical activity can have an impact on young people from a very early age, such as contributing to their long-term health, improving their life prospects through better success in education, developing social and life skills, improving their personal confidence and self-esteem, encouraging social cohesion, and fostering inclusion. The intrinsic values of sport foster the development of fairness, responsibility, team work, communication and problem-solving skills.

I recently attended the Commonwealth Advisory Body on Sport meeting in Kuala Lumpur where the Chair, Sue Campbell, spoke about the English approach to tackling structured physical activity and sport in schools.

In summary, Sue said:

‘While a definitive relationship between sport and educational attainment remains somewhat challenging to document, schools in England with a sport specialism have been shown to achieve a sharper improvement in results than maintained schools, and tend to perform relatively better than non-specialist schools, both over time and at a given point in time. Sport can act as a vehicle for learning in ways that are more appealing and engaging to young people, while pedagogical approaches that use the values of sport can elicit improvement in the behaviour, attitudes, concentration and, ultimately, the learning of young people. The evidence of physical activity per se having an impact on educational attainment is less clear, though a previous report of three longitudinal studies emphasises that academic performance is maintained or even enhanced by an increase in a student’s level of habitual physical activity.’

In partnership with AusAID, the Australian Sports Commission is using sport in the Caribbean, southern Africa and the Pacific region to engage communities. This work is being recognised internationally by the United Nations not only as delivering physical activity and sport benefits, but as delivering health and lifestyle changes.

It is widely accepted that a lack of physical activity can significantly increase the risk of diseases that are linked to sedentary lifestyles, such as coronary heart disease, obesity, hypertension, osteoporosis and diabetes, all of which can have their origin in childhood.

Like the Active After-school Communities program we have developed and implemented here in Australia, in England a similar conscious effort is being made to transform the way that young people think about sport and its link to healthy lifestyles. Schools are using sport as a way of targeting and engaging young people who are overweight or at risk of becoming obese in an endeavour to build the foundations of a more healthy and active lifestyle from an early age. As we have found, it is often critical to find the right activity to attract these young people, and there is growing acceptance by schools that it is no longer sufficient to simply offer ‘traditional’ sports and to believe that ‘one size fits all’. Many schools in England are tailoring and extending their range of sports provision in order to attract the maximum number of young people and targeting specific groups with potential health issues.

Perhaps it's time that Australia looks to its historical roots and uses the English model of a cross-agency boundary approach where structured physical activity and sport can be the means to an end for many of society’s growing issues.