To think kids should do more PE at school?

[BlingBang]

Just curious - my kids are at primary in England - they usually get one slot of PE a week though they have a period of swimming for a few months round about Y3 as well. how much PE do your young kids get? my friend in Scotland was saying how her 6yr old gets it 3 times a week. If they can do it - why can't other schools. Also when any assemblies or shows come up - PE just seems to get dropped anyway.

schools do their best!!

walk to school campaigns
moderating lunchboxes
playground equipment

its down to the parents!

Do activities with your children, sports, kite flying, water activities.
Walk more. For my two, anything around 4 or 5 miles is perfectly reasonable.
Teach them how to cook healthily at home and eat the results.

And they get criticised for at least 2 of those things to heysoulsister! They really can't win!

I really think schools cant win sirzy! look at the posts here about sportsday for example.

as well as the posts when someone gets a letter saying their child is obese.....its head in the sand for many parents

i'm a lone parent to 5.....my eldest has never been sporty,but she's off to uni and already signed up for the gym and some running and walking groups. so proud of her! my kids have always seen me doing sport so hopefully ive set a good example. as minehave reached teens its something we can do together and keeps lines of communication open. so many benefits

IMO, a big problem is the structure of the average child's day:

07.00: Get up, get dressed, sit at breakfast table, eat cereal, sit in car, be transported to childminder's house;
07.30: Arrive at childminder's house, sit in front of TV/on floor with toys;
08.25: Sit in childminder's car (because many parents don't want their kids to complain about setting off earlier to walk to school in cold/wet) for journey to school;
08.40: Walk 50m from childminder's car to playground, see friends for 5 mins, stand in line until called into classroom, do school day;
15.15: Walk 50m back to childminder's car (because many parents don't want their kids to complain about missing their TV programmes/eating dinner later than 4pm/walking home in the cold/wet);
15.30: Watch TV/sit on floor playing with toys until dinner time;
16.30: Sit at dinner table, before returning to sit in front of TV/toys again;
17.30: Sit in parents' car on way home;
18.00: Sit with parents to do reading/homework/spellings/more eating;
19.30: Sit with parents and watch TV until bedtime.

I don't know what the solution to the above problem is, because it's nobody's fault. Of course, if more DC went to the nearest school rather than the best within the catchment area, and if more parents were happy for CMs to remove easier/unhealthier transport and entertainment problems, then the situation would improve. However, I don't think that regular bursts of not-very-demanding exercise (which is all that schools can extract from children can't shower afterwards, or just plain old don't want to push themselves because they don't like it or feel self conscious) can make up for an overall sedentary childhood.

And at weekends?
And holidays?

Whoever is looking after children be it parents, childminder or after school club should be encouraging children to be active after school. Chuck them into the garden or go to the park!

We also need to remember that childen won't melt if they get rained on!

Nom that's not a routine I really recognise tbh. All the CM's at our local school walk back and forth at least at the start and end of the day, and they all take their charges to the local park after school too. And there's a lot of 'No, we have to leave now to drop child x for swimming, then we're taking you to gymnastics' or whatever.

I do feel really sorry for a CM I know well though, she is stuck at the pool all Friday pm as various charges do their swimming lessons. Can't be much fun for her!

Silverapples - I take your point, but being that sedentary for 5 days per week for 39 weeks per year throughout their formative years hardly constitutes a healthy baseline for physical activity.

Plus, most of my friends' DC get spend their weekends doing extra homework, cinema trip/pottery/restaurant birthday parties, visiting GPs who don't want them running around, and watching TV/reading while their parents do the housework. Saturday morning swimming lessons don't do much to counteract that on a week-in-week-out basis.

As I said - nobody's fault, but there's so much sedentary stuff crammed into the average week that I can't see how gentle exercise at school can possibly hope to counteract it.

Wilson - that's great, I'd love to believe that my suburb is an anomaly. Most of the CMs I know either have to drive as they do drop-offs at multiple schools, or all of the DC are at the "better" school which is too far away for a short walk. When my DM was still doing it (retired 2 years ago), we lived 10 mins walk from the local school and 4 out of 5 parents insisted that she drive regardless of the weather because their DC didn't like walking or "couldn't miss their programme"...

(DM also used to do the "pool from 3.45-5.45pm every Tuesday" routine with lots of books and toys for the non-swimmers, but parental complaints stopped that as well!)

Erm lack of activity does not cause obesity, obesity leads to a lack of activity. More pe won't mean we have less fat children unless we also address eating habits.
Pe has plenty of other benefits though, but these benefits could be felt simply by enabling children to have outdoor play at lunchtimes/breaktimes, that way we wouldn't have to alter the curriculum

Erm lack of activity does not cause obesity

Of course it does, what a strange comment to make!

Now being overweight might make it harder for people to be active but that comes later in the cycle. If children (or adults) are sat being inactive for large parts of the day of course they will put on weight.

It's a scientific fact, not a strange comment. The myth is perpetuated by food and diet/ fitness industry that exercise is the most effective way to lose weight or that 'burning' calories through exercise is all that you'd need to do. Studies have been conducted that found that over a long period the rest and activity of those that were active and those that are inactive is actually very similar. I.e if you exercise more your body will compensate with more rest. This is true even of athletes.
A child who sits still all day will only get fat if they are shovelling in more junk/crap than their body needs.

I would love to see a link to that study.

I spent most of my days reading books (no tv or computer), but on my arse for most of the day nonetheless, I wasn't an overweight child as my parents didn't over feed me with processed rubbish!

I do think schools should promote daily exercise, so that it becomes habit as children grow up, and not the dreadful netball/hockey I was forced into once a week. I exercise daily and have done for years but I had to 'train' myself for it to become a normal part of my daily routine.

I'll try and find it for you. I'm not trying to be incendiary, I'm just trying to point out that there is a lot of smoke and mirrors around this subject. There are a hell of a lot of people that have vested interests in maintaining that it is only exercise that is needed to solve the obesity epidemic. PE is certainly necessary for its other benefits but not purely to stop out children getting fat.

Where I work, a prep school, children get 3 hours (an hour each time) of sport a week, plus an afternoon of matches if they are picked to be on a team (about 90% of the children are each week). They can choose to do additional sport/playing in the woods once a week (equally in this time they could choose to do art and craft or ICT). Anyone who wants to be in the swimming squad gets an hour of swim squad training a week on top of all the other sport. They can have tennis lessons at school after school all year round. Golf and judo are options once a week in games sessions.

They get two 15min breaks a day where they can run around/play football/tag/golf etc. if it has snowed they get to play out in the snow, go sledging, throw snowballs etc. Some of our optional Saturday activity options are active, e.g. Wide games in the woods, swimming, badminton, etc

Sport is not an addon or an option, it's just something that is part of the ethos and culture of a school like ours.

Parents need to take some responsibility themselves and stop saying "but my child hates sport" as i just dont believe them. What they mean is they cant be arsed to find a sport their child will enjoy.

Jammie - I spent my teens eating processed rubbish, inhaling sweets, and doing sod-all in terms of physical activity. Despite that, I have never had a BMI of over 22 or any spare fat on me. However, as is often repeated on here: the plural of anecdote is not data. You and I are both lucky that we didn't end up overweight - my DB had a great diet and the same lack of physical activity as me but still struggled with his weight, and that only changed when he started eating far less than me and exercising every day.

Nobody has said its only exercise that is needed.

What is needed is healthy eating AND exercise. Without both of them then it is very hard for someone to be healthy, they may be slim but slim and healthy are not the same and a lot of people do appear to forget this.

We need to bring children up understanding the importance of being active and eating a healthy balanced diet. One without the other is going to have minimal effect.

My DS1 does PE twice a week, this term school got some additional funding for sport and they all had cricket lessons once a week as well. There are lots of free after school sport sessions (multisports, dance, football) he is offered a place for at least one of these each term. In KS2 he'll have swimming once a week at some point.

That's not enough overall - but it's not just the school's responsibility. He walks to and from school every day in all weathers, he has a weekly swimming lesson, he's out on his bike at the weekends (14 mile round trip on the cycle path) and in the holidays he plays tennis and goes to sport-based childcare at the leisure centres.

I agree with the people who are saying poor diet is the main cause of childhood obesity, but encouraging more physical activity can only help. There is a limit to how much responsibility school can take for children's weight or fitness - they are only there some of the time with a lot of other stuff to fit in. School feed them for at most 5 meals a week, the biggest influence on their weight is what they eat at home or at Miss Millies

(PS - I agree with you that diet is ALSO important as a means of avoiding obesity, but I believe that most children also require quite a lot of exercise in order to counterbalance the amount of time they spend sitting down.)

I'm not sure exactly how much PE time my dds have. I think it might be twice a week for the younger ones and they have outdoor play sometimes as well. But imo they dont get enough time at lunchtime, only 35 mins, which doesnt give them much time to eat their lunch and play. at my primary school it was more like 50 mins, which gave a longer break before the afternoon.