What is the School Games?

National School Games Mission: Keeping competitive sport at the heart of schools and providing more young people with the opportunity to compete and achieve their personal best.

The School Games is a national programme funded by Sport England, coordinated by the Youth Sport Trust and delivered by the network of School Games Organisers and Active Partnerships. It consists of four unique types of competition:

  • Intra-School - These activities are ideally initiated by young people in schools, but are normally run as breakfast, lunch or after school activities, and in some cases they are used as part of PE lessons.
  • Inter-School - A calendar of local events organised and delivered by a School Games
  • County Festival - A culmination of a variety of both inter-school pathway and open entry competitions.
  • School Games National Finals - The Biennial four day multi-sport event.

For more information on all of the above please click here to head to the School Games website.

Reframing Competition

To continue to build on the School Games Mission and Vision, the YST conducted some research into the current competitive school sport environment, to evaluate the possibility of conducting different approaches and formats to competition in order to increase young peoples participation in sport and physical activity.

Following the research the YST have created an interactive resource which considers alternative ways to design and deliver competition, based on eight key themes indicated from the research. The 'Approaches to Competition' resource is available to download at the bottom of the page.

What can you do to #reframecompetition?

Your School Games Organisers

We are lucky to have such enthusiastic and hard-working School Games Organisers who plan and deliver a variety of Inter School Games events throughout the year. They are also essential to providing Active Dorset with advice and support for all County School Games competitions in Dorset. Click on their personal school games page link below to find out more information about each School Games Organiser.

Please contact your local School Games Organiser (SGO) for information and guidance on the following:

Active Dorset Logo
Sport England Lottery Funded Logo
Active Partnerships Logo