Guernsey pupils show higher physical activity levels than UK peers

Wednesday 09 October 2024

A recent study measuring physical activity among school children in Guernsey has revealed promising results.

Conducted between February and June 2024, the trial involved 789 students from years 3 to 6 across 11 Guernsey schools using Moki fitness trackers.

It aimed to gather comprehensive data on student physical activity levels during school hours for two of the three days they wore the trackers. Out-of-school activity was also recorded, although compliance levels were deemed too low for reliable analysis. 

When compared to the Moki Active Schools Project conducted in the UK in 2023, involving 384 children across 13 schools, Guernsey students were found to be significantly more active. 

Guernsey pupils are 23% more active than the Moki average highlighting strong in-school activity levels.

This increase was observed across genders, with boys and girls in Guernsey being 22% and 26% more active, respectively, during school hours.

The study offers detailed insights into daily step counts and active minutes. 

The average step count for Guernsey schools was between 6,030 and 8,232 steps, surpassing the 4,000-8,000 step range of UK schools involved in the Moki project. 

The overall average daily steps for Guernsey pupils stood at 7,330, with boys averaging 7,989 steps and girls 6,723. The average active minutes at school per day was 35 minutes, with individual year groups ranging from 30 to 42 minutes of activity.

The project was a collaboration between schools and the Health Improvement Commission's Be Active team.

“These are reassuring statistics, and it is pleasing to see that children are being given the opportunity to be active throughout the school day,” said Alun Williams, the Be Active Lead at the Health Improvement Commission.

 “The numbers of children being active for 30+ minutes per day is testimony to the school’s commitment to The Education Strategy priority to create inclusive cultures supporting health and wellbeing for all.”

They now want to establish more in-depth surveys school by school.

“We plan to extend the surveys to include more accurate information on out of school activities including weekends. The data will support the schools in developing whole schools approaches to physical activity.”

The Office of Data Protection Authority worked to ensure children’s privacy rights were improved when using the tracking wristbands.

This included parental consent being an opt-in rather than opt-out.

“By its very nature, children’s personal information is sensitive, and this sensitivity is further heightened by the fact we are dealing with health-related data”, said Data Protection Commissioner Brent Homan. 

“This was clearly an initiative of high social benefit and we were extremely impressed with the cooperation and evident commitment of the HIC in championing improvements to the programme’s privacy features.”

The OPDA engaged with Moki to assess their security safeguards for collected data along with their data protection terms and conditions. The ODPA were satisfied that MOKI’s safeguards, including data anonymisation and encryption were of an elevated level.

The ODPA saw the potential for Moki to improve the transparency of their messaging about the data they collect and under what circumstances that data would be shared. 

Moki agreed to implement these recommendations.

“We are pleased to see Moki’s high safeguard standards for a technology associated with the data of children, and their commitment to transparency improvements that will not only benefit users in Guernsey, but across the UK” said Commissioner Homan.