Every school knows its children need to be more active. What most schools don't have is a simple way to see how active they really are. The Virtual Skipping League turns a few minutes of skipping into live league tables, activity totals and evidence your school can use, and it takes almost no time to do.
Getting a class's activity onto the league is quick. The children skip for 30 seconds to a voiced timer, and the scores go straight in. A teacher can type them, use the tap counter on a phone or tablet, or let Young Leaders enter them. The league tables update straight away.
Every go counts. You don't just record a child's best score: every attempt is added to the child's activity and to the school's total. So a class that has three goes in a lesson gets credit for all three.
And the children love it. Calling out their counts, watching the timer, then seeing their class climb the table is part of the fun. The recording isn't a chore that gets in the way of the activity. For many children it's the best bit.
Once your activity is online, it starts working for you.
See which classes are skipping, how often, and how they compare with other classes in your school and beyond.
The league builds your School Games Mark evidence as you go, and gives you class activity reports for your PE premium report, for governors and for Ofsted.
And it gives the children a reason to keep going. Tables, certificates, awards and champions give them something to aim for, week after week, all year round.
School Games Organisers (SGOs) can see the schools in their area in one place, with live results and nothing to collate. They can run area challenges and area finals without buses, cover or forms, and see their schools' numbers, including girls, boys, SEND and pupil premium. Active Partnerships can see the same picture across their county.
🔒 All of this is collated without names. No full surnames are ever stored, and the area and county figures are totals, not lists of children.
Because every go is recorded, the league soon shows you which children are active and which aren't. That's true in a single class, across a whole school, in an SGO's area and across the country.
Knowing who the less active children are is the first step. Getting them involved is the next, and that's where we can help. The league brings its own incentives and motivation: league tables, personal bests, certificates, awards and reward ropes that can only be earned through the league.
With skip-hop's 25 years of running skipping workshops in schools, we have the ideas and tips to get every child involved.
At first glance, you might think the younger children can't take part. Reception and Key Stage 1 children are still learning to turn a rope, so how can they post a score?
You'll be surprised at what some of them can do. In almost every Year 1 and Year 2 class there are a few children who can already skip. And getting just one child onto the league makes a difference. When the other children see a classmate's name in the table, they want to get there too. That one child sets the pace for the whole class.
There are ideas freely available on the Virtual Skipping League site and on the skip-hop site to help you get the younger children skipping:
Don't forget: even while the children are learning and you can't record individual skips yet, you can record their activity. Every skipping session, whether it's a PE lesson, a playground session or a few minutes in the classroom, can go onto the league.
All of it goes towards your school's totals, and all of it is collated without names. A Reception class that's still learning to jump a rope is already helping your school.
Over 25 years of workshops, skip-hop has developed ways to help every child take part, including adaptations for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). Small changes to the rope, the skill or the way it's taught can mean a child who thought skipping wasn't for them gets to join in with everyone else.
♿ You can read about these adaptations, and many more ideas, in our article on SEND and other adaptations on the skip-hop website.
