Table 2.

Implications for policy and practice

	Key finding	Implication
1	Inspection systems (e.g. Ofsted) and pressured curriculums create challenges to promoting physical activities	Significant policy reform is necessary to enable schools to prioritise physical activity. Currently, these inspection systems are leading to schools focusing their limited resources on core curriculum subjects. By making physical activity a part of these inspection systems schools will be encouraged to improve their provision. However, it is important that this coincides with increased funding and resources to avoid this policy change from becoming an additional pressure in an already highly pressured environment.
2	Senior Leadership Team shape school priorities	Senior Leadership Team buy-in is a key component of promoting physical activity in schools and steps should be taken to encourage and enable senior leaders to improve their school’s physical activity provision. For example, by making physical activity a more focused area of regulatory inspections while providing additional funding. Until systems change, however, greater focus needs to be given to how to work within current systems that make physical activity difficult to prioritise to encourage Senior Leadership Team buy-in.
3	Schools with high pupil needs face increased pressures	Future physical activity promotion in schools must consider how best it can support schools, pupils and staff who may be experiencing greater challenges and how interventions can be tailored to these needs. Specifically, schools within disadvantaged communities may face broader challenges, such as those related to pupil engagement and socioemotional health, that require additional support to ensure that physical activity is equitably promoted.
4	Lack of training and curriculum pressures are encouraging schools to outsource Physical Education	Policy reform to ease school pressures and provide more Physical Education training to teachers before they are fully qualified is needed to ensure teachers feel supported and confident to teach Physical Education. This will allow teachers to confidently teach quality Physical Education and alleviate the costs associated with outsourcing these aspects of the curriculum to external commercial organizations.