2 hours a week - primary school physically education

[SteamWisher]

I'm doing school tours as my PFB starts primary school next year.

I was and :( when they said the kids only did two hours of PE a week. Seems very little to me. AIBU and unrealistic? There's so much in the news about overweight kids so why not more.

Not just that but they don't seem to get out much beyond play time. I don't know - I just wish kids had more outdoor learning.

Not all private schools have longer days but still seem to fit in more sports, smaller classes and being able to do roughly as they please I suppose. At my DCs school they also do a lot more languages and music than their previous state school between the hours of 9 and 330.

I think it is a shame that there is not more importance put on PE by the government, there are a lot of overweight kids (who may or may not be physically fit) as well as skinny kids who only do the tiny bit of exercise at school and nothing outside.

There seems to be more importance put on weighing them and labelling them obese and so on and not actually looking at their fitness and how to encourage them to exercise by providing more opportunity for sports. My DS2 is huge for his age 97th percentile for weight and height which apparently makes him obese. He's not of course and exercises 6 days a week as well as all the other times he is playing sport in the garden.

2 hours is good to be honest. Some only do an hour.

Maybe you can consider extra sports outside of school?

As children move up, there are often school clubs etc which are sports based.

But in my experience, 2 hours is standard and enough for KS1.

Sounds about normal. My Ds (aged 7) plays football at every break so he does much more exercise. Dd (aged 10) does netball after school. Ds does football (one x training and one x match a week) and also self defence) and swimming lessons and also sometimes we go swimming on a sunday as well.

That's a good point, BabyMummy. I moved from a crumbling wreck of a school in the sodden NW that had three halls to a lovely school in the drier SE that had one and a field. Both schools 14 classes.
We managed a lot more activity in the first school; more indoor space, before the huge pressures of the need to be 'Outstanding' and children that didn't fear the rain.

DS goes to a private primary, but they still only get 2 1h sessions of PE a week. That's in P1 though and I think it does increase from P3 up. Once they start team sports then a lot goes on after school hours (if they are in teams).

They are turfed outside to run around 3x during the school day and if there are after school activities they can sign up for too.

I read the thread title and thought 2 hours is a lot!

They are only at lessons for maybe 4.5-5 hours a day and I think any more than 2 hours of formal physical activity would be too much and would take away from other areas of education.

They can choose to run around and play actively during playtimes and parents can also enrol them in sporting activities after school hours.