Monday Interview: Shaun Fox, managing director of Sporting Age

A highly experienced PE teacher now manages a sports education company, founded to help primary schools improve the levels of physical literacy among their pupils.

Shaun Fox explained that Sporting Age, which is based at John Smith’s Stadium in Huddersfield, also helps teachers become more confident in delivering lessons involving physical activity and sport.

The business, which has four directors and a five-strong delivery team, originated in the idea of children being assessed at school for a ‘reading age’ to determine the level of books they should be reading.

Sporting Age uses a digital platform that takes data from a series of benchmarking tests to determine a child’s individual ‘Sporting Age’.

Fox said if a child is engaged and participating in a level of physical activity that is matched with their level of skill, they are much more likely to stay engaged, interested and develop a life-long awareness of the importance of physical activity as part of an ongoing healthy lifestyle.

He and his team have identified a Sporting Age for over 7,000 primary school pupils across Kirklees, and are now widening their reach across Yorkshire and the wider UK.

Since officially launching in 2018, Sporting Age has secured investment funding from Sporting Capital, won a Tech for Good award and also welcomed business stalwart and Huddersfield Giants chairman, Ken Davy, as its chairman.

Fox, who began his PE teaching career back in 1991, explained: “We work with primary schools to develop fundamental movement skills in children, as we know that if they have these skills they are much more likely to engage in additional physical activity.

“Parental involvement is also absolutely key – so we try and encourage parents to work with their children to develop those skills.

“We’ve got a really good customer base here in Kirklees and West Yorkshire which is gaining traction and we’re accumulating more and more data which enables us to spot trends and inequalities in schools.

“We have national expansion plans and are looking for partners in different geographic locations who can roll out the programme on our behalf. At the moment we’re in talks with organisations in Birmingham and London.”

He explained the company’s product can help narrow the physical health inequalities between children from areas of deprivation and youngsters from affluent places.

And he stressed good physical health has a positive knock-on effect on children’s mental health.

However, Fox warned that the advent of the digital age, with children spending so much time looking at screens, has had a harmful impact on youngsters’ physical wellbeing.

“What we offer has been six years in the planning,” he added. “We’ve done our research, we know our product and we know that we can make a significant positive difference.

“One of our main challenges is getting access to the key decision makers at schools. But every time we’re able to speak to a head teacher directly we’ve had a degree of success.”