Australian out-of-school care pilot boosts children’s activity levels and reduces screen time, but implementation challenges remain

A new Adelaide University programme in Australia shows promising results in increasing physical activity and lowering screen time among children in out-of-school care, highlighting both potential benefits and implementation hurdles.

A programme designed to help after-school and before-school care services get children moving more has delivered promising results in Australia, according to Adelaide University researchers. The university said services that completed its Activated OSHC training and accreditation programme were far more likely to meet recommended physical activity and screen-time targets, while children in those settings also recorded stronger movement levels before school.

The findings matter because outside school hours care reaches a large number of families. Professor Carol Maher, the lead researcher at Adelaide University, said more than 500,000 Australian children use these services each week, giving providers a major opportunity to build activity into the day rather than leaving it to parents and children alone. She said the programme focuses on the setting around the child, including staff training, the activities on offer and the policies a service puts in place.

Activated OSHC is a free, evidence-based online programme created by Adelaide University with the OSHC sector and developed with government and child health experts. It was trialled in almost 200 services caring for about 10,000 children nationwide and includes training, practical ideas for active environments and guidance on reducing screen use. Services are also helped to create physical activity and screen-time policies that line up with Australian guidelines.

The new study found that services which completed the programme had more than seven times the odds of meeting physical activity and screen-time targets before and after school. They also showed a 23% increase in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity during before-school care, and staff were three times as likely to display behaviours that encouraged movement. Professor Maher said the results showed that embedding healthier practice into policy and daily routines could change the experience for children.

But the research also underlined how hard it can be to turn an intervention into routine practice. Adelaide University said about 80% of participating services registered for the programme, but fewer than half completed all the training and policy steps needed for accreditation. Across the full intervention group, including services that did not finish the process, researchers found no significant improvement in overall guideline adherence or in children’s activity levels.

That gap between enrolment and completion reflects a wider challenge in public health: good ideas do not always translate into sustained change in busy settings. Professor Maher said services need time and practical support to implement new approaches properly, adding that the next step is to help more providers reach accreditation. Future research will look at extra implementation support, peer learning and whether the model can work internationally.

The study builds on earlier Australian research showing wide variation in how active children are in outside school hours care, with some services allowing substantial time on screens. It also sits alongside work by Adelaide University and other experts to develop more standardised guidelines for physical activity and screen time in these settings, after reviews found that advice across services had been inconsistent.