Schools’ Newsletter
Issue One, December 2018
Elaine Wyllie, Founder of The Daily Mile, with the children of St. Brigid’s National School at The Daily Mile Pilot launch at St. Brigid’s National School in Castleknock, Dublin. Photo by Matt Browne/Sportsfile
Miles of Smiles
New Research Backs The Daily Mile™ Research led by the Universities of Stirling, Edinburgh and Highlands & Islands provides a blueprint for schools to achieve success with The Daily Mile, which now takes place in 6,300 schools, with 1.3 million children taking part. Findings confirm that the popular health initiative’s core principles of simplicity, flexibility and adaptability, are key to success and help make The Daily Mile a ‘sticky initiative’. The Daily Mile founder, Elaine Wyllie said:
“I am thrilled that The Daily Mile has once again proven to be a successful initiative backed by research. The new research from Stirling University confirms that the core principles of The Daily Mile offer schools and educational establishments a way of implementing The Daily Mile with flexible delivery and adaptability.”
Just months after the Universities of Stirling, Edinburgh and Highlands & Islands proved The Daily Mile improves fitness and body composition in children, new research by the same team has found the key to the health initiative’s success lies in its core principles and ease of implementation. Sport England has recently committed £1.5 million of National Lottery funding to support The Daily Mile across England. In what is the biggest ever expansion of the programme since it originated in 2012, the investment will fund the recruitment of National and Local Coordinators to support and encourage more schools in England to sign-up. The scheme has already received formal backing from the Scottish and Welsh governments, it has been praised by UK Prime Minister Theresa May in Parliament and in July was included in the UK Government’s Childhood Obesity
Strategy paper. The health initiative has experienced its highest period of growth ever this autumn, and over 6,300 schools with over 1.3 million children in 55 countries have signed up, with 415 schools now taking part in Ireland. The findings of both research studies from Stirling University are available at www.stir.ac.uk/thedailymile. Teachers in schools across Ireland and the UK have reported success with The Daily Mile in terms of fitness, reduced obesity and attainment in class. This latest report provides clear evidence that the initiative can be successfully implemented in schools. The two significant studies from the Universities back up results from a three-month pilot inspired by The Daily Mile, where children at a school in east London ran for 15 minutes three times a week and teachers found improvements to fitness, self-esteem and wellbeing. Their SAT results were also significantly higher than expected. In 2017 a BBC-sponsored Terrific Scientific survey of the effect of exercise on 12,000 children’s concentration showed that children running a daily mile saw improved cognition and wellbeing, compared to other groups in the survey.