"Does running a mile a day really improve children's lives?" PDF
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St Ninian's Primary School
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This document discusses the Daily Mile, an initiative to promote physical activity in schools. The program involves pupils engaging in 15 minutes of self-paced walking or running around a playground, and studies have shown positive effects on children's fitness levels and well-being. The initiative's focus on physical fitness is described alongside its purported benefits on children's academic performance and potential to address health inequalities.
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**Does running a mile a day really improve children's lives?** Head teacher Ellie Wyllies was concerned about the level of physical fitness of her pupils at St Ninians Primary School in Stirling and wanted to find a way to improve it. The solution she came up with in 2012 was both simple and cheap...
**Does running a mile a day really improve children's lives?** Head teacher Ellie Wyllies was concerned about the level of physical fitness of her pupils at St Ninians Primary School in Stirling and wanted to find a way to improve it. The solution she came up with in 2012 was both simple and cheap - pupils leave the class for 15 minutes every day to walk or run around the playground at a self-selected pace. The *Daily Mile* was born. Individual teachers can decide when to fit the Daily Mile into the school day, and it is done in addition to existing PE lessons and does not replace the exercise children get while playing during break. A study involving 391 children from two Scottish primary schools showed that children who were doing the Daily Mile were significantly healthier than those who did not. After seven months participants had improved their fitness by 5% and reduced their body fat by 4%. This is important because 30% of children between the ages of seven and eleven in England and Scotland are overweight or obese; this is associated with a greater risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease in later life. Even so, initiatives such as the Daily Mile are only part of the solution. [The Department of Health says](https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/exercise/physical-activity-guidelines-children-and-young-people/) that children over the age of five should be engaging in at least an hour of physical exercise every day -- yet only a fifth of children aged between five and 15 achieve this. If one hour of physical activity per day sounds like a lot to you, you are not alone: [in a recent nationwide survey](http://www.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/news/0516-research-suggests-modern-lifestyles-preventing-families-from-being-active/), a third of parents underestimated how much exercise children need. "Parents and children felt that the biggest barrier to being more active was a lack of time," says Susan Coan at Leeds Beckett University, who led the study. "From our research in this area, the main piece of advice would be for families to find ways of being active together that work for them. Small changes are more sustainable and can make a real difference -- for example, walking part of the way to school or playing active video games as part of children's screen time." Although all parents agree on the importance of physical activity, some are concerned about reducing children's lesson time by 15 minutes each day. Yet, time taken away from lessons for physical activity is time well spent and does not come at the cost of getting good grades. Teachers consistently report that the Daily Mile improves the children's focus, attention and behaviour in class. When the children come back they are ready to learn and able to settle down to their work. The fact that the Daily Mile takes place outside enhances these effects further. "Bright light directly influences and activates areas of the brain that control alertness and cognition," says [Dr Rachel Sharman](https://www.ndcn.ox.ac.uk/team/rachel-sharman), a sleep researcher at the University of Oxford. Since 2012, the *Daily Mile* has spread to more than 3,600 primary schools in 35 different countries. This success has even inspired an adult version of the *Daily Mile*, with the hope of inspiring even the busiest of people to incorporate 15 minutes of self-paced walking, jogging or running into their daily lives. Ellie Wylie's intention was simply to get the children fit, but what has pleased her most is the levelling effect the *Daily Mile* appears to have: "It seems that the less fit and more overweight the kids are at the start, the more they benefit," she says. Given that obesity is more common among lower socioeconomic classes, interventions such as the Daily Mile could help to close the gap in health inequality between rich and poor. If true, 15 minutes a day would be a small price to pay.
