The most educationally disadvantaged group in Australia are Indigenous youth (Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands and the descendants of these peoples [Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people]) [1] . Their educational outcomes are generally lower, and their school attendance and participation rates are poorer than their non-Indigenous peers [2] . Indigenous youth are also underrepresented in Australian universities, where they account for less than 1% of all enrolments at higher educational institutions [3] . Indigenous students’ who enter higher education are more likely to experience lower attrition, retention and completion rates than non-Indigenous students. In fact, the attrition rate for first year Indigenous students is estimated to be between 35% to 39% [4] , while overall completion rates are less than 50% compared with 72% for non-Indigenous students [5] .

The World Health Organization [6] and a number of independent researchers have found that the sport context can provide opportunities to promote youth development through the learning of life skills and educational values that enhance their ability to succeed in future endeavours [7] [8] . Life skills have been defined as physical, behavioural, and cognitive abilities such as problem solving, goal setting, and time management [9] . Life skills enable youth to succeed in the different environments in which they live, including education settings [10] . Through an ethnographic study of one high school soccer team, Holt et al., [8] found the following three types of life skills were associated with participation on the team: learning to take initiative, respect, and teamwork/ leadership (the latter of which appeared to transfer from sport to other areas of life). However, the authors observed little direct teaching of these life skills. Camire, Trudel and Forneris [11] interviewed high school athletes and found that school sport participation allowed them to develop skills such as communication and self-efficacy, which could be transferred to other life domains. These studies provide some evidence for the potential benefits of school sport, but as Camire’ et al. [11] suggests, additional research is needed to better understand the particular structures and mechanisms that leads to the acquisition of life skills in school settings.

Only a small number of studies have reported on school-based sport programs that focus on the development of life skills, attitudes and outcomes for Indigenous youth [12] [13] . These studies were successful in terms of developing a small number of life skills, but similar to most of the international studies involving under-served youth; it is acknowledged that sport programs alone are not enough. Teachers/coaches need to provide opportunities for youth to acquire these life skills through sporting activities and a positive and supportive environment that shows transferability to other areas of their life [14] .

There is some persuasive evidence to suggest that school-based sport programs can also improve youth concentration and arousal, which might indirectly benefit academic performance [15] . However, it should be noted that the educational benefits claimed by school-based sport programs, and physical education [16] , are highly dependent on contextual and pedagogic variables, such as the intellectual quality of and integration of explicit life skill teaching during sessions. Hence, this area needs to be further explored.

School-based sports programs have the opportunity to develop life skills, but also physical activity levels of youth [17] , which is associated with a number of health benefits [18] . Unfortunately, the physical activity levels of many children and adolescents are currently insufficient to promote these health benefits [19] - [21] , including during physical education and school sport lessons [22] [23] . The proportion of lesson time during which students were engaged in physical activity, at an intensity that was health enhancing (MVPA), was typically less than the 50% target that was proposed by the US Department of Health and Human Services [21] and the UK’s Association for Physical Education [24] . As a result, these lessons may provide insufficient MVPA for youth to benefit. This is particularly important for school sport-based programs that target Indigenous youth, as the health status of Indigenous people is considerably lower than that of non-Indigenous populations worldwide [25] [26] . This gap is narrowing in the United States, Canada and New Zealand, but in Australia, the gap in health indicators such as life expectancy continues to widen [27] . A major concern is that the prevalence of Type 2 diabetes is higher and occurs at a younger age for Indigenous youth than non-Indigenous youth with the median age of diagnosis at 13.6 years for Australian Indigenous youth [28] .

Researchers, teachers and administrators know little about how different school sport programs promote or impede life skill development and physical activity among youth [29] . In the case of Indigenous youth, current research suggests that the adoption of a strengths-based approach, which focuses on the abilities, knowledge, capacities, skills and cultural resources of participants, is essential in school sport and health promotion programs targeting this group [30] . However, few school-based sport programs which target Indigenous students have been evaluated [31] making it difficult to determine which are most appropriate and effective for improving knowledge and modifying the life skills and physical activity behaviours of Indigenous youth.

The primary aim of this study was to investigate the effect of a community and school sport program (SCP) on urban Indigenous adolescents’ life skills and physical activity levels within program sessions.

The primary aim of this study was to examine the percentage of SCP session time Indigenous youth spent participating in MVPA and developing their life skills. Students participating in SCP were engaged in MVPA for 58% of sport-based sessions, with teachers and experts providing many opportunities for participants to acquire and practice sport-related skills (75% lesson time). In terms of physical activity participation during school-based practical sessions, no formal guidelines exist in Australia. However, the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) [21] and the UK’s Association for Physical Education [24] recommend that 50% of physical education class time should engage students in MVPA. Therefore, the SCP sessions exceeded this minimum guideline, and was higher than those found in other studies in Australia (30%) [42] and Asia (35%) [43] . The findings were similar to one other Australian school-based study (approximately 55%) [44] . In Dudley and colleagues’ [44] study, participant’s participation in MVPA declined in physical education from Years 7 to 8 (57% to 52%). The mean age of participants in the SCP was 13 - 14 years (equivalent to Years 8 to 9), which suggests that the program’s vertical age grouping impeded the decline in MVPA levels usually associated with school- based practical classes.

The majority of the practical sessions were focused on improving students’ skill levels through explicit skill instruction and practice (50%) and game play (25%). This is in contrast with Dudley and colleagues’ [44] study with their participants spending only 5% of available time in skill instruction and nearly double the time spent in game play (44%). A possible reason is the aims of the two different school programs. The SCP offered a range of activities and sports (e.g. surfing and gridiron) that participants had not been exposed to previously. This meant that the sessions were skill drill-oriented and involved explicit instruction to allow participants to acquire a basic level of skill to participate safely. Importantly, the interview data showed that when Indigenous students were learning new activities and sports, they were just as engaged in explicit skill instruction when compared with game play, and enjoyed this context and learning environment. These qualitative results are similar to other Indigenous youth school-based studies. For example, the Australian Football League’s Kickstart program [45] and the Deadly Choices Health Education program [46] aimed to deliver positive lifestyle messages to Indigenous youth though the promotion of physical activity in school based programs, with improvements found in the education, attitudes and lifestyle choices of participants, suggesting that school-based programs which provide opportunities for involvement in physical activity have the potential to engage students and promote positive health and lifestyle choices for Indigenous young people. However, it is also important to note that the Deadly Choices program, similar to the SCP, focused its physical activities on participation rather than expertise, recognising that not all Indigenous young people engage in or enjoy sports and physical activity [46] . Hence, school- based initiatives should offer a diverse range of opportunities to convey education, physical activity and health messages, based on the assets and strengths of Indigenous young people.

This study also found that the teacher and experts who implemented the theoretical and practical sessions spent time promoting in-class physical activity (53%), but less than 1% encouraging students to be active outside of practical sessions. Whilst this is similar to other studies that have reported teacher interactions and promotion of physical activity in practical sessions [46] [47] , if teachers want to encourage lifelong physical activity to promote health, their interactions and explicit promotion of physical activity options within and outside of the classroom needs to be emphasised.

There was no significant difference in life skills at baseline (5.58 [1.17]) and follow up (5.71 [0.87]) (p = 0.93) and no significant improvement in any of the eight individual life skills assessed. There may be a number of reasons why there was no change in life skills. First, a range of different experts ran sessions during the case study and may not have been aware of the emphasis on developing Indigenous adolescents’ life skills, whilst engaging them in sport, cultural or financial education content. This has been reported in previous studies, where a growing number of high school sport coaches are not teachers within the school system, but are expected to be aware of broader program objectives [48] [49] . Second, intentional instruction and practice of life skills may not have been embedded in theoretical and practical sessions. Previous experimental research has shown that life skills can be taught and learnt in school-based curricular sport programs and extra-curricular sport programs, with a recent review emphasising the need for life skills to be explicitly taught and practiced [50] . Last, the number of participants completing follow-up measures was low and may not be indicative of the life skills taught and learnt.

The results show that the SCP was reasonably acceptable. Implementation rates were appropriate and were only affected by external conditions outside of the control of the community organisation, school and teacher/ experts. Attendance rates were lower than expected. Not many school-based programs systematically and explicitly report attendance rates, especially those that target minority groups [51] , but of those school-based programs that have been reported, the curricular components due to their compulsory nature have higher attendance compared with non-curricular school components (i.e., recess and lunchtimes) [52] [53] . Possible reasons for the lower than expected attendance rates for the SCP include: students requested to attend class for assessments, exams and formal learning tasks; absence from school due to sickness and end of school year celebrations; and involvement in a community cultural demonstration. The semi-voluntary nature meant that attendance rates were similar to other voluntary non-curricular components of school-based interventions.

Retention rates were also similar to other school-based physical activity programs [52] . The SCP was delivered in the last school term of 2011, with follow-up measurements scheduled in the last week of the school year. Nearly half of the students did not attend school in the last week and therefore could not complete follow-up measures. Future school-based studies will need to consider the scheduling of measurements to ensure that all students will be present and available.

Despite curricular clashes and poor scheduling of follow-up measurements, interview data showed that Indigenous students and key stakeholders believed the SCP was highly acceptable. However, cultural awareness training for the wider school community was noted as an area in which to improve the implementation and support of the SCP. Therefore, engaging the Indigenous community in the design, development, implementation and evaluation of intervention programs, specifically those that are school-based, promotes cultural and social relevance and reduces the burden on schools and teachers to sustain such programs.

The major strengths of this study were the recruitment rate, implementation of sessions and the process data that showed the support and the promotion of the SCP among key stakeholders. The community based participatory approach, which encouraged the Indigenous community group and student participants to play a major role in the design, implementation and evaluation of the SCP, enhanced a number of acceptability factors, but further research is required to consider strategies to improve participant retention and program attendance. As such, the data reported in this paper was largely descriptive and not powered to detect individual differences, but provides formative data for planning a larger scale intervention in the future.

Although this study provides insight into the context of an Indigenous community organisation’s school sport-based program on Indigenous adolescents’ physical activity and life skills, it is important to recognize that there were a number of limitations to the study. The main limitations were the potential for bias created by the lack of control or comparison group, small sample size, low attendance rates at program sessions, low number of follow-up measures implemented (which made it difficult to determine change in life skills), and the case study approach which lacked empirical generalizability. These made it difficult to infer data on the effect of the school delivery of SCP.

Case and pilot studies enhance the likelihood of success of a larger scale RCT and are deemed essential for studies that focus on underserved groups [54] . This case study showed that the SCP and teacher/experts were able to provide opportunities for Indigenous adolescents to participate in MVPA for more than 50% of session time. However, they were not able to provide opportunities for Indigenous adolescents to practice and learn life skills, such as goal setting. The community-based participatory research approach was appropriate for most of the acceptability outcomes, but not for participant attendance and retention. Hence, school-based physical activity and life skills intervention studies need to consider strategies (e.g., programs not competing with other curricular subjects and intentional and explicit life skills instruction) to engage Indigenous adolescents for the duration of the program.

In conclusion, the case study shows that the community and school sport-based program sessions promote health-enhancing physical activity among Indigenous adolescents. This is an important aspect of the SCP, particularly for the potential health benefits. The inclusion of life skills instruction and practice needs to be more explicitly embedded in these sessions for Indigenous adolescents to successfully cope with the complex realities of life, through enhanced goal setting, problem solving, and positive-thinking abilities. Further research is needed to determine if further modifications of the SCP have an effect on Indigenous participants’ physical activity levels outside of program time and the development of life skills.

The funds for this project were made available through the Charles Perkin Centre at the University of Sydney. The authors would like to acknowledge the Indigenous community organisation, the three schools and the key personnel, teachers and participants for their cooperation, enthusiasm and support.

Financial support for the project was provided by the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney. The funding was used to provide opportunities for the researchers to collect all data (e.g., relief for classes). There were no conflicts of interest.