Kilometre Club Hub
Kilometre (KM) Club is a school-based physical activity program that provides children with the opportunity to run, walk or jog on an outside course at a designated time of day. It was set up in 2014 by a deputy principal at Hastings Primary School, Port Macquarie, New South Wales (NSW).
Since its establishment, student participation has grown exponentially, and the program has expanded into multiple primary schools across NSW. The delivery model varies across schools, as the program has been adapted to each school’s context, for example, before-school vs during-school programming.
Read an overview of the Kilometre Club Research Evaluation and Translation.
KM (Kilometre) Club is a grass-roots school-based physical activity program. The program has been identified in multiple schools on the Mid North Coast (MNC), originating from Hastings Primary School, Port Macquarie (NSW). The KM Club aims to encourage physical activity by providing students with the opportunity to run, jog or walk outside, on a track, at a self-selected pace. The delivery of KM Club differs across each school, where some run the program before school, during school, only two days a week or every day.
In 2019 the MNC Local Health District Health Promotion team set out to conduct a mixed-methods evaluation of KM Club. This is the first study to evaluate the program.
Aims:
- Evaluate benefits, enablers and barriers of KM Club.
- Evaluate the effects of KM Club on physical activity behaviours of school children in the school day.
Outcomes:
- All schools implement a range of flexible and adaptable factors which meet the school context.
- KM Club demonstrated a variety of health, wellbeing and educational benefits for children, as well as an increase in their physical activity levels.
- The findings from this research will help to inform the improvement of school-based physical-activity programs, potentially improving short-term and long-term health outcomes and contribute to reducing childhood obesity in NSW.
In 2020 and 2021 the KM Club Evaluation was a category finalist for Keeping People Healthy at the MNCLHD Innovation Award. The evidence:
KM Club is fun, easy and cost-free. You can adapt the program suit your schools context.
We have created some resources to help you get started:
This workshop was run to support teachers and school staff to implement KM Club.
This workshop will provide you with:
- Information about KM Club
- Research outcomes of the KM Club Evaluation
- Benefits for teachers, families and students
- Strategies and free resources to get started
If you require more information please contact us at mnclhd-hp@health.nsw.gov.au