Evidence

Schools

Children and adolescents spend most daylight hours at school. Hence, the design of schools can impact their health and wellbeing.  The school building and site should provide for a variety of different social activities, suited to student interests and group sizes.  [9] Their design, including the amount of and type of green space and playground equipment, influence children’s physical activity.  [4, 10-12] [3-6, 13] The inclusion of varied play opportunities is critical for encouraging school-based physical activity.  [7, 14] 

School grounds and playgrounds accessible outside of school hours can also provide benefits to the wider community with some planning policies such as Liveable Neighbourhoods in Western Australia, actively discouraging high fencing around schools.  [9] 

School playgrounds 

Throughout the school day, physical education classes and playtime (i.e., recess breaks) represent two important opportunities for children to be physically active whilst at school.  [3, 13] A recent review found that the contribution of recess to total daily physical activity ranges from 5% to 40% for boys and 5% to 31% for girls. [4] Indeed, the provision of playground and sports equipment and facilities is positively associated with children’s recess physical activity.  [3, 4] 

Larger shaded and unshaded grassed areas, sports equipment, and sheltered play equipment and social spaces increase the amount of both class-time and recess physical activity.  [4] Indeed, Martin and colleagues found that for each additional 100m2 of grassed surface per child, children undertook 1.2 minutes of class-time moderate-vigorous physical activity  [15] and 4.5 minutes of recess moderate to vigorous physical activity.  [16] 

Painting playground surfaces with lines for recreation games or murals encourages children to be physically active during daily recess.  [3, 5, 6] In one study, children spent more than 50% of recess engaged in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity after the markings were painted, compared with 38% before the intervention.  [5] In another study, the increased level of physical activity persisted for six months among both boys and girls. [6] It has been shown that children in schools with activity zones featuring painting, markings and equipment took around 200 to 300 more steps in a 20-minute recess period compared with control schools.  [10] 

Children prefer school yards that are spacious enough not to feel crowded, and have a range of landscape features including seating, playgrounds and green space.  [17] Small, cluttered school yards with lots of landscaped playground features are disliked by children, discourage play and are associated with higher body mass index.  [17] For more information about the design of playgrounds, please refer to Public Open Space. 

Active transport and routes to schools 

Schools are an important community facility and daily destination to which children and adolescents may walk.  [18, 19] Active commuting to school can contribute to children achieving recommended physical activity levels.  [2, 20-23] A number of studies have found that children who walk to school are likely to engage in more physical activity overall  [20, 21] and are more likely to meet physical activity guidelines than children who travel by motorised travel.  [2] Participation in active transport to school has the potential to improve health through its contribution to overall physical activity levels and fitness.  [24, 25] 

Providing good walking and cycling routes around schools encourages children to walk and cycle, and has a positive effect on their physical activity and health with the two most important factors being distance to school and features of the built environment - including pedestrian infrastructure, traffic and perceptions of safety.  [26] Children attending ‘walkable’ schools i.e., with connected street networks and lower levels of traffic are more likely to walk and cycle.  [25, 27, 28] For more information, please see the Movement Networks design feature.