What is the Active School Flag Programme?

The Active School Flag (ASF) is a program that encourages schools to achieve a physically educated and physically active school community. This is typically done through an Active School Flag team which organises different sports events and activities both during and outside of P.E. classes. The program aims to get more schools, more active, and more often. Therefore, our challenge as the ASF team of Drimnagh Castle Secondary School was to find interesting and exciting ways to promote physical activity in our school community. 

In order to achieve the goals of the Active School Flag program, we required the participation of all students in our school community. We acknowledged that their activeness and youthfulness were key in helping them become more physically active through this program. Moreover, the ASF team encouraged teachers to incorporate physical activity into their lessons whenever possible. This meant having physical activity OUTSIDE of P.E. encouraging more people to participate. 

In order for the ASF to work effectively in our school, we required a strong student voice to support and inform our work. This meant allowing students to make suggestions that are taken seriously and applied by the school. Mainly, listening and taking feedback from students who are less active was important in shaping the ASF team’s aims to get all students more active and participating more. 

Whole School Event

The whole school event took place in late November and was our first opportunity to achieve our ASF objectives. During the course of these eventful weeks, our ASF team worked hard to organise different activities with our junior students. We had to plan a Whole School Event as our first big task in active schools. We examined the findings of a survey our students had participated in with the University of Limerick. We chose to have a dodgeball and tug of war competition after analysing the data because those two sports were the most popular. 

Dodgeball tournament-First we chose suitable times to carry out the whole school event. We then formed teams for the dodgeball tournament using the class lists for all first and second year students. Consequently, we set up two courts and commenced the games. I can still recall how excited and enthusiastic the students were to partake in the activity. To increase the joy and zeal of the sport we even allowed two TY students to join the different teams at the final game. The two winning teams from each year group competed against each other in the championship game. The winning team got their names published on the school notice board.

Tug Of War-The third year students were overjoyed to partake in the activity, and did so with much enthusiasm and interest. They were given the opportunity to form their own teams for the tug-of-war competition after which they all competed against one another. The two teams with the most victories met in the final, with the names of the victorious teams displayed on the school notice board. Overall, the events were a success as we promoted physical activity in fun, exciting and interesting ways. Most importantly, every student was able to participate in the whole school event, therefore it was in correlation with our ASF school motto: ‘More Schools, More Active, More Often.’

Table Tennis Tournament

For the first years, the ASF team organised a table tennis competition during lunchtime. Sixteen people were selected between the two classes. The contest ran successfully for two days, filled with much determination, ebullience, and glee from the students. The winner of the tournament was Mohammed Hussein. The P.E. hall served as the venue for the contest.

Rowing 

The ASF team decided to include transition years in the programme; by arranging rowing lessons from an Irish Olympian rower. We learned several techniques and as well as rowing styles over the course of one month, which was bursting with energy, excitement, and fun!

After the training sessions, we completed a rowing blitz in Trinity where our team finished in fifth position, which was quite good given that it was our first competition.

Transition years had another training session at Islandbridge Rowing Club where we picked up some basic performance tips and advice, and after that we were prepared to compete against other schools on the Grand Canal Dock. It was largely a fair competition because everyone had roughly the same amount of experience. We ventured off into the docks ourselves where we met with the rest of our classmates and then travelled to where the rowing was taking place. The schools then waited beside the docks for their turn. 3 shells raced at a time, going straight from point A to point B. The whole experience was very exciting, tense and suspenseful. Cheering could be heard from counties away! We ended up with 1 team winning gold, 2 teams winning silver and 1 team winning bronze, which was a great result if you ask me. If we had the opportunity to do it again, we surely would!