This season
Results
How racing works
Children in Need Row 2026
Get involved
Children in Need Row 2026, 2 to 13 November. £5,949 raised by 9 teams so far.
How it works
The Schools Indoor Rowing League turns a single rowing machine into a nationwide competition. Pupils row a standardised test, teachers submit the results online, and every school competes on exactly the same terms — wherever they are in the country.
From sign-up to the leaderboard, here is what a season looks like for a school.
Sign up for the season and get your logins, lesson plans and resources, ready to run rowing in your PE lessons.
Run two short sessions a week across a ten-week season using ready-made lesson plans. A single day of teacher CPD is all the training your staff need — no specialist coach required.
Pupils complete the four-minute test — or the 2,000m time trial for older students — on a Concept2 machine. The PM5 monitor records every metre, automatically.
Teachers enter the results online. Scores are benchmarked by age and gender and roll up into regional and national league tables that update all season.
Both tests run on the same machine and produce a single, comparable score.
League standard
Row as hard as you can for exactly four minutes. The score is total metres. Everyone finishes at the same time, so a whole class can be tested in one lesson. Concept2's benchmark tables — built from 21,000 pupils — show each rower whether their score is fair, good or excellent for their age.
For older students
Row 2,000 metres as fast as you can; the score is the time taken. It is the international racing standard — ideal for more experienced pupils, and used as an end-of-season final assessment.
Every result is set on a Concept2 rowing machine. Because every Concept2 is calibrated identically, a score set in a Cornwall village hall is directly comparable to one set in a Newcastle sports hall — and that is exactly what makes a fair national online league possible.
The PM5 monitor on each machine records metres, time, pace, stroke rate and heart rate — so the data behind every result is consistent and complete.
Results update through the season and can be filtered by age group, gender, school, region and test type.
Benchmark bands sit alongside every score, so pupils see context rather than just a number — “847 metres, good for your age group.”
Individual scores roll up into a school total. Layer on a relay challenge — a class rowing collectively towards a target, like the length of the Thames — and the whole class pulls together.
The hard part — making results comparable — is already solved by the equipment. Everything else is designed to be straightforward for the staff running it.
Ten structured plans for ages 7–18, mapped onto the National Curriculum. Technique, intensity, relays and assessment rubrics included.
Before each season, PE staff attend a one-day session on technique, running sessions and machine care — then deliver independently.
The data is real and usable: pupils graph pace in maths, explore force and fluid dynamics in physics, and analyse their own results in computer science and biology.
Register today and we'll set you up for the season with lesson plans, teacher training and everything you need to run the league in PE.
