By Ian O’Flynn, Assistant Principal, Crown Hills Community College, Leicester, and Youth Sport Trust advocate.

I have been at Crown Hills Community College, in the heart of the city of Leicester, for four years now. It has proudly kept its title of ‘Specialist Sports College’ both in letter and spirit; sport, physical activity and wellbeing is in its DNA. Recently, the college has been recognised as being a Beacon Well School by the Youth Sports Trust, one of only five in the country, and, in January (2025), got an ‘outstanding’ judgement across all four areas from OFSTED. But what does all this mean for its students?

We have been thinking of innovative ways of keeping our students active during unstructured time since the Covid-19 pandemic. The latest of which has been ‘active line-ups’: students spend the first ten minutes of the day moving around the playground (physical health) and checking in with their tutors and friends (mental wellbeing). Ismail in Year 8 has reported back that “It helps [him] to prepare for my lessons, get some exercise and talk with [his] friends”. We are now working towards ‘active soles’, which will see trainers become part of the school uniform to allow for easier and safer unstructured exercise.

Improving confidence
The Chief Medical Officer recommends that young people aged 5-18 should take part in 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity a day across the week. We have 150 minutes of PE in KS3 and 100 minutes in KS4 to help our students to achieve this. As a result of which, Nikhil, in Year 7, told me that “PE is fun and engaging. It helps my mental and physical health and I might want to get a job in sport when I am older”. What we really aspire to is for our young people to feel confident and prepared, like Nikhil, to continue this into adulthood. 

The Well School Framework has the three pillars of Lead Well, Move Well and Live Well, all three of which sit under the over-arching umbrella of Well Culture. Part of the Live Well pillar is around leadership and volunteering; as such, we run a sports leadership programme within school, which is progressively more demanding in its nature, year by year. Fatima, in Year 9, said “I enjoy leading young people and seeing them learn and improve in sport and physical activity”. Aaliyah, also a sports leader in Year 9 said “I am usually quiet, but, when I’m leading, I become more confident”. As I’m sure you’ll agree, such positive feedback to be getting as these girls talked to me while delivering sessions to some of our local primary schools.

Understanding the world around us 
Educational visits are also a strand in the Live Well pillar and, since the pandemic, we have been taking our students on typically British experiences. In Year 7, they visit the seaside and get to paddle in the sea and have an ice cream. In Year 8, they go to London and go on the London Eye and a Thames river cruise and, finally, in Year 9, they go to Chatsworth House and look around the house and have fun exploring the gardens. Many of our students have never left the immediate Leicester area and the cultural capital that they gain from these experiences allows them to understand more about the world around them. This is why we decided to make these trips fully funded so that no student misses out.

Access for all
On the subject of cultural capital enhancement, we also run a highly prestigious Sports Academy within our college. Membership of which allows our students to smash through any perceived glass ceilings and know that they can stand shoulder to shoulder and compete against any person in the world, no matter what their background (the coaching that they receive on this programme enables this to happen).

The Move Well pillar strap line is "every pupil is prepared physically and mentally for learning and for life" and the existence of the Sports Academy is very much a manifestation of that goal. Mohammed, in Year 8, spoke to me about his experience in the Sports Academy, “Being in the Sports Academy has allowed me to improve my skills in fencing. This has boosted my confidence to compete against anyone”. Indeed, fencing is not a sport that is typically associated with an inner-city, multicultural school in Leicester but we have developed it within the curriculum (access for all) and as a more elite strand, that is, within our Sports Academy. 

Find out more
More information about the Well School movement is available on the Youth Sport Trust website.