Key findings from the 2018 Further Education Survey
All Further Education colleges in Wales took part in the survey with almost 4000 students completing an online questionnaire. That’s 8% of the eligible learners.
• 43% of students take part in sport or physical activity on three or more occasions per week. This is a decrease of 6 percentage points since 2015. 36% reported in 2018 that they did no frequent activity.
• As with the School Sport Survey findings, there is a gender gap in participation. 50% of male students are participating in sport or physical activity three or more times a week, compared with 36% of female students. Although this gap has decreased since 2015 by 5 percentage-points, it is a greater gap than that seen in primary and secondary school pupils (School Sport Survey 2018).
• 32% of students took part in sport or physical activity at least once a week at college (37% male; 27% female). Outside of college, 60% took part once a week or more often – 64% of male students and 56% of female students. Students aged 16-19 are more likely to be frequent participants than students aged 20 or over.
• Around half of students report that they have ‘good’ or ‘very good’ health – 53% overall. 16% thought that college helped them ‘a lot’ to have a healthy lifestyle and male students (18%) were more likely than female students (14%) to have thought this.
• 54% of students are confident trying new sports (67% of male students and 43% of female students).
• 22% of students had volunteered in sport in the last 12 months, giving their time on an unpaid voluntary basis to help run sporting activities. Students were most likely to volunteer in coaching roles (67%) or officiating/refereeing roles (20%), helping to support the delivery of sport.
