A one-off skipping festival is a great day for the children who go. A league keeps every child skipping all year: class against class in your school, or school against school across your area, with no travel.
🪢 Check the ropes before round one. If half the class has tangled, too-long or too-light ropes, the table measures the ropes, not the skipping. One rope per child, the right length for their height – why not all skipping ropes are equal.
Intra-school competition that the whole school takes part in, run in PE lessons, at playtime or as a brain break.
Use half terms as rounds. Every class skips at least once each round, and you crown round, term and whole-year champions. Give the league a purpose too, such as more pupils active more often, so it counts as a competition with a clear intent.
Count 1 every time the rope passes under the feet; steps count, and after a trip the count carries on. The free voiced timer starts and stops everyone together. Full rules and expected scores are in the 30-second challenge.
Use the class average of the best 80%. Every pupil on the register is counted and a missing score counts as zero, then the lowest 20% are dropped before averaging.
Compare classes within the same year group. A Year 6 class will always out-skip a Year 1 class, so a whole-school prize should compare each class with the expected score for its year group.
Record every go so you can show how active each class has been, and use each pupil's best for the table. Share the table in assembly, give certificates for the fastest and the most improved, and let Young Leaders count and run sessions.
For School Games Organisers and Active Partnerships. Instead of one festival for a few pupils from each school, every class in every school takes part, in its own hall, in the same weeks.
Same event, same counting rule, same rounds, same way of scoring classes. Send schools the 30-second challenge page and the timer so every hall runs it the same way.
The hard part of a virtual competition is collating results. Ask schools to enter scores online in the round, not email them to you afterwards, so the area table builds itself and nobody retypes anything.
A one- or two-week challenge inside a round keeps schools coming back: most improved, most active, a Year 6 transition challenge, or an area skip total where every skip in the area adds to one shared number.
The top classes in each year group from the area table meet for a one-day final, with teams of skippers adding their 30-second scores together. Publish the results for parents and governors, like the area finals results.
You can run all of this on paper and a spreadsheet. The Virtual Skipping League does the fiddly parts for you, free:
| Job | On paper and a spreadsheet | Virtual Skipping League |
|---|---|---|
| Entering scores | Sheets collected and typed up | Typed, uploaded or tapped in on a phone; Young Leaders can send scores for a teacher to approve |
| Fair class scores | Best-80% averages worked out by hand | Worked out automatically, with every pupil counted |
| League tables | Updated when someone has time | Live for your school, area, county and the whole country |
| Certificates | Made and printed by hand | Ready to print for pupils and champion classes |
| School Games Mark evidence | Counted up at the end of the year | Built as you go: participation, girls and boys, least active, young leaders |
| Area challenges and finals | Emails and spreadsheets from every school | Set up in the SGO view; schools see them on their dashboard |
A league between classes counts as intra-school competition when it has a clear purpose. A league between schools counts as inter-school competition when your School Games Organiser runs it. Either way it gives evidence on participation, girls and boys, least-active pupils and young leaders.
About five minutes a class: thirty seconds a skipper, with half the class skipping while the other half counts.
Yes, because classes are scored on the average of their best 80%, not totals, and whole schools are compared with the expected score for each year group.
Yes. Stepping over the rope counts, every child has their own personal best to beat, and the most improved awards are open to everyone.
Nothing. The Virtual Skipping League is completely free for every school and every School Games Organiser, now and after the PE and sport premium ends.
Register your school in a few minutes, or get your free SGO login and invite the schools in your area.
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