The Educator Magazine U.K. Jan-April 2024 issue - Magazine - Page 69
“The Youth Sport Trust has a track
record of helping children access, enjoy
and benefit from inclusive and
engaging physical education, physical
activity and sport in schools. Children
are born moving and so the task at
hand is how to ensure they can keep
moving, develop physically as well as
academically through education and
find activities and sports they can enjoy
for life.
“To do this we have to start in schools sadly, a further 4,000 hours of
Physical Education have been lost from
the curriculum in state-funded
secondary schools in the last
academic year, and access to cocurricular enrichment programmes
and after school sport is declining.
This translates into a devaluing of the
importance of physical activity and
the role sport plays in developing skills
for life, while also reinforcing the false
separation between mind and body,
movement and learning.
“It is encouraging the Government’s
recent Sport Strategy committed to a
national campaign to raise awareness
of recommended activity levels for children and young people. Given
that our research shows less than half
(43%) of parents are aware how active
their children should be, a campaign to
highlight why 60 active minutes a day is
so important is vital to drive the societal
shift we need to see.
“But alongside this, I believe raising the
importance of physical development in
the early years, supporting all schools
to be active learning environments
and re-imagining Physical Education
so its sole purpose is healthy learners
and active citizens would represent an
informed and powerful response to this
latest set of Active Lives Data.”