Withywood Community School has opened a Personal Best Challenge Park to encourage physical activity among pupils during break times through a scheme developed by the Youth Sport Trust in partnership with Coca-Cola Great Britain and the British Olympic Foundation.

The initiative was launched to help schools meet the government’s latest target of giving young people access to at least four hours of high quality physical education and school sport per week.

The Withywood Community School Personal Challenge Park was designed based on student feedback, creating activity zones which reflected their leisure interests as well as the Olympic values of friendship, participation and personal achievement. It was officially opened on 13 January by Olympic bronze medal-winner, canoeist Helen Reeves.

The Personal Best programme was created following research by the Institute of Youth Sport at Loughborough University, which found that secondary school pupils are only active for about 10 per cent of their lunch hour. Pilot studies of the scheme saw children more than double this.

Withywood is the fourth Personal Best Challenge Park to be developed. Coca-Cola Great Britain has committed to developing 10 throughout England by the start of 2006.