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Ministry of Football is well-placed to conduct research into children's football development. We do not have the constraints of following a club philosophy, we have a very supportive group of parents, and we have enough children on our programme to conduct surveys and research projects that produce statistically significant results.

On average 82% of a Ministry of Football session contains Active Learning time. This is compared to just 20% of the average school PE lesson

Our first research project took place in March 2011. This research studied the number of minutes in a MoF session that children are Actively Learning. This is in response to a recent study by Movement Dynamics, which found that children are only active for 8 minutes of 40 minute school PE lessons.

Our experiment: We used parents and spectators to help us with this research. 15% of parents used a stopwatch to record the amount of a one-hour lesson that their child was engaged in Active Learning. We defined Active Learning as any activity that gave the opportunity for movement, learning and play. Therefore the stopwatch was stopped when the child had a drink break or was listening to the teacher give instructions. This research was carried out across the following four age groups: 4-5 years, 6-8 years and 9-12 years.

We found that: On average 82% of our session time gives children the opportunity for Active Learning. This varied from 75% to 91%, mainly depending on the coach and the age-group. The main reasons that parents gave for non-Active Learning time was when children stopped playing to listen to the teacher give instructions or ask questions.

We learnt that: We run intense sessions that are full of play. We identified that we need to be consistent with the number of drink breaks we give to each group, and that we can maximise Active Learning time if we give children something to do when they return from a drink break - such as juggling a ball or passing against the wall (this allows the children who only need a very quick drink to continue playing and learning).

Future research projects will look into the effect of music on skill development and creativity; the amount of learning and involvment in small-sided games depending on team size; how environmental factors (such as using an indoor area, not having sidelines, recycling the football) can enhance intensity and learning in children's play.