Girls Active Initiative

This year Great Marlow has been involved in the Youth Sport Trust’s nationwide project, Girls Active. A group of students from Year 8 to Year 12 were selected to attend a festival at Stoke Mandeville stadium in March and there they planned their actions for increasing girls’ participation in sport at school. They agreed on three pledges:

• to create more opportunities for girls to participate in sport
• to ensure female sports teams have a kit
• to help improve students’ attitudes towards PE lessons

For the first pledge, the participants set up their own Girls Active club that ran every Wednesday with the support of Miss Zuccarello and Miss Towe. This involved a complete take over of the sport centre for an hour each week. Girls had exclusive access to the fitness suite, dance studio and sports hall and the Girls Active Leaders organised activities such as boxercise, netball, volleyball, badminton and trampolining. By the end of the summer term, numbers reached the height of 55 in one session! The sessions also encouraged staff to join including Miss Tuddenham, Miss Bevan, Miss Russell and Miss Morbey.

The second pledge is on going but the Year 10 leaders have worked alongside the PE Department, with financial support form FoGMS, to design and order new dresses for the senior netball teams. These will arrive in September and we look forward to seeing the girls compete in them.

The third pledge relied on the influence of Girls Active Leaders in their PE lessons. Four girls that have had a particular influence and, therefore, earned the reward of being shortlisted for the national Girls Active awards were Chloe Brownbill, Daisy Coombs, Mia Elton and Harley Stevens. Chloe was the winner of the Committed Learner Award for the South and won a whole host of prizes and the chance to be interviewed by the YST. GMS are equally proud of  the three other shortlisted nominees: Mia Elton, Harley Stevens and Daisy Coombes. These three students are celebrated on a separate article. The official blog can be found using the  link: http://girlsactive.youthsporttrust.org/blog/

The Girls Active programme will be continuing next year and we look forward to reporting on further success.