Opening Schools Facilities

Opening Schools Facilities is a £57m Department for Education investment programme. It runs from 2022 - 2025 to meet the goals of the Government's School Sport and Activity Action Plan

The aim is to help schools to open their existing sport facilities, including school swimming pools, for a broader range of young people and to support the wider community by partnering with sporting organisations, who can help deliver activities in these settings.

What Does the Fund Aim to do?

The objectives of the funding can be broadly split into four categories:

To support schools to open their facilities outside of the normal school day (evenings, weekends, and holidays) to allow children & young people and the wider community to access more opportunities to be physically active.
To open school swimming pools focusing on swimming and water safety lessons both during and outside the school day for pupils at their school and for pupils at other local schools.
To provide participants with a range of stimulating and enjoyable opportunities to take part in physical activity and sport, in addition to that experienced within PE lessons and extra-curricular activities.
To ensure participants are signposted to take part in the same or similar activities in their local community, following the end of their participation in the programme.

Who Can Benefit?

Both primary and secondary schools are eligible for the Opening Schools Facilities funding. At SASP, we used data and consultation to inform us of the schools we would like to work with.

The funding was distributed in small grants to a number of priority schools based on schools in areas of deprivation where activity levels were low and schools focused on children and young people with additional special educational needs and disabilities.

We're working with: