To think that PE could be reconsidered in order to be a more meaningful and enjoyable experience for secondary aged pupils (and primary too!)?

[EveSix]

This week, I'm hearing so many of DC1's school friends and parents express their frustration with the experience of PE in school (secondary age in our case, across several schools, two counties / local education authorities). So many pupils seem to loath it and struggle to participate with any real sense of enthusiasm or enjoyment.

In DC1's friendship group, PE gives rise to lots of anxiety about changing bodies and comparison; nobody seems to feel better for a stint on the field. I'm an active adult now and love physical exercise on my own terms, but remember feeling very much like DC1's friends when I went to school.

Looking at the National Curriculum for PE (KS3 copied in below), I can't help but to feel as if there could be another way of teaching young people to actually enjoy physical activity and feel good and safe in their bodies. There are so many ways to be active, and some of them, if approached sensitively and creatively, would be bound to appeal to kids who don't feel there is a place for them in PE lessons at the moment.

Across the schools I know, there seems to be a big focus on competitive team sports and track, which just isn't going to be everyone's idea of fun. I'm sure many more pupils with SEN and anxiety are exempt from PE than geography or food tech because it's can be such a high stress environment. When I exercise, I'm definitely not looking for a stressy time.

Does anyone care to join me in musing on what alternative provision and activities might be enjoyed more broadly if made available?
If you didn't like PE the way it was taught at your secondary school, is there an activity you think you might have enjoyed? Or perhaps a different approach to teaching PE altogether? Contributions from DC welcome!

YABU: young people just need to crack on with it; PE is character-building

YANBU: PE could be made more enjoyable and relevant to a wider range of pupils

My suggestions would be (some might involve travel to facilities not within easy walking distance):
Yoga
Pilates
Nordic walking
Mindfulness walking
Archery
Fencing
Badminton
Table tennis
Rollerskating
Ice skating (DC1's school is in spitting distance of an ice skating rink, for instance)
Gym sessions for cardio (exercise bikes, treadmills, rowing machines etc) and free weights

I am convinced that if I'd had the experience of learning to enjoy a range of physical activities that made me feel good about myself in a relaxed environment during OR lessons, I would have been happier in general at school.

Here's the the first part if the PE Programme of Study for KS3:

Purpose of study
A high-quality physical education curriculum inspires all pupils to succeed and excel in competitive sport and other physically-demanding activities. It should provide opportunities for pupils to become physically confident in a way which supports their health and fitness.

Opportunities to compete in sport and other activities build character and help to embed values such as fairness and respect.

Aims
The national curriculum for physical education aims to ensure that all pupils:
 develop competence to excel in a broad range of physical activities
 are physically active for sustained periods of time
 engage in competitive sports and activities
 lead healthy, active lives.
Attainment targets
By the end of each key stage, pupils are expected to know, apply and understand the matters, skills and processes specified in the relevant programme of study.
Schools are not required by law to teach the example content in [square brackets].

PE is the only subject which involves direct face-to-face competition and it’s wrong and harmful.

Well that's a bit of a stretch! If there was a problem with bullying in your PE lessons then it should have been dealt with by the teacher. Don't extrapolate it to say that all competition is bad!

@oviraptor21

Agreed. It’s not harmful to some kids. There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to win as long as it is channelled in a healthy way. To say it is wrong and harmful for all is a bit of a statement to say the least.

Yanbu. Surely they could do a re think or have options. For example they couldnt teach 30 kids to roller skate, you normally need to hold someones hand when you start. But you could have roller skating as an option for someone who can lalreqdy roller skate and have their own kit.

I dont get why they can't do thinks like Joe Wicks / Zumba / Yoga from youtube, there are a million teaching videos and all they need is a big screen

Brefugee

non of that will sort the need for every child to enjoy and engage in meaningful and enjoyable exercise which is what the focus of PE lessons should be.

I hated PE and was able to drop it after '3rd' year as it was then.

But outside school I was doing ju-jitsu and swimming.

Actually I can remember the teacher's face when we had to do sit up in PE, we did sit ups as part of my Ju-jitsu warm up.

She told us to do 10, I did them while she was looking at other girls, then she asked me why I stopped, I told her I'd done 10, so she told me to do 10 more, so I did, while the sporty girls were finding it hard.

When we had broken pipes that caused a flood and the gym was out of action for weeks they put loads of us, not in PE kit, in the hall to listen to music and do the dance / actions to it.

That was quite fun, it was later called aerobics.

Aerobics could easily be done by a PE teacher.

Marching / drill dance wouldn't cost much to do in a school, it's popular in Australia nd NZ.

so @L1f30fp1 - instead of sniping from the sidelines, what do you suggest?

I happen to have been one of the sporty ones, fencing captain, hockey captain, tennis team, lacrosse team. We had an agreement in my class which started in the changing rooms: rudity about nudity and you'll be sent to coventry
and that whoever did the team picking, picked the weaker ones first. We all knew who they were, they all knew who they were. They were put out of harm's way, if that's what they wanted, or they were put in a position they thought they could handle. There were some problems, some were useless and had strops, but for the most part it worked well.

Our sports teachers were young and engaged and had a very good handle on things.

Agree with everyone who's posted about PE being a miserable experience at school in our day, something that probably turned more people off exercise for years afterwards than actually helped them.

I was the kid always picked last, spent most hockey and netball games running away from the action, and walked the entire cross-country course. I did no meaningful exercise for nearly a decade after I left school because I hated what I knew of it so much. Now in my late 30s I now run 15km twice a week, play tennis at least once a week and work out with weights at home. The point of PE at school should have been to help me find my way into the exercise that suited me, not to turn me off it.

Agree that the emphasis on team sports is a huge part of this - absolutely nothing about them appealed to me. But what fundamentally made PE pointless for me was that nothing was ever actually taught. There were naturally sporty kids who seemed to instinctively know how to play hockey, netball, whatever. I still don't know how, maybe they were in clubs outside school or their families taught them. But if you weren't naturally sporty or naturally co-ordinated, you were basically ignored, except sometimes to be yelled at for not making any effort.

No one ever taught me proper techniques or tactics in hockey or netball. No one even taught me proper technique in tennis, which I actually enjoyed - I just wasn't good enough to be on the school team. In cross-country, no one ever taught me how to pace myself, how to use breathing to focus, how to prepare for a race in terms of food and drink, how to avoid injury.

Actually knowing what you're doing and how to get better goes a long way to making something more enjoyable.

How PE was taught to non-athletic kids would be analogous to not bothering to teach a kid in the bottom maths set how to add up.

But, the sporty kids should also be able to enjoy the lessons.
Make it optional then. Let the sporty kids do sport and the rest do some simple individual exercises which are within their ability range. Nobody is forced to attempt tasks beyond their ability in other lessons. PE needs to be differentiated appropriately.

I'm conflicted about this. I think I agree that perhaps too much focus on competition and not enough on health benefits. And I say this as someone who enjoyed PE, likes team games and did pretty well. But likewise, most state schools are not set up or funded to offer that kind of variety and choice. Team games can be an important part of learning, too. Cooperation, camaraderie etc.

Plus, far from wanting to opt out of PE, my sen child relies on physical activity as an outlet. At almost 6, she does tend to prefer solitary or 1 to 1 exercise like taekwondo and gymnastics, but part of her development is focused on enabling her to acquire an understanding of the need to cooperate with others which she'll get from team sports as she gets older. Not all sen children fit the 'anxious' box in all respects. Mine has absolutely no anxieties about taekwondo classes - she loves it and excels.

And if body anxiety is a thing for teenagers, and I am sure it is (I can't really remember that far back!) surely this could be remedied by allowing children to come to school in their PE kit.

PE streaming seems like the obvious solution to me.

I was crap at PE. I can't reliably catch a ball, hit a ball, or throw it in the right direction. My balance isn't great and I used to be a slow runner. I'm clumsy. I now think I'm an undiagnosed dyspraxia.

I really enjoyed PE until about the second year of secondary, when everyone else in my class became aware of how crap I was. Always picked last for teams, moans and groans at getting stuck with me, nasty comments, feeling bad every time I messed up. If all us duffers had been streamed together, I would have continued to enjoy it.

There's an attitude that if you are bad at sports, you just aren't trying. That curriculum expecting all children to 'succeed and excel' at sport is the same attitude. No one expects every child to excel at physics, or English, it's accepted that there are different abilities, and the aim is for children to achieve the best they can as individuals. I would never excel at any sport in a million years, but that doesn't mean I couldn't enjoy it.

You realise that you can’t speak in normal tomes, outside with multiple kids all running and all the extra noises that comes with that.

Abusive shouting is one thing, but ‘come on, speed up etc’ is fine.

And whose fault is it that these kids are so unfit?

Always somebody else’s fault.

But what fundamentally made PE pointless for me was that nothing was ever actually taught.
This! You were forced to play sports and your natural ability level was where you were at, full stop. There was never an assessment of your skills or a plan to help you slowly improve. You were never asked about your diet or given diet sheets or exercises to attempt at home. There was no programme of building up slowly to being able to catch a ball. In fact there was never any suggestion that you could or would improve at all. Just an hour of being forced to attempt things that were too difficult and beyond me, then nothing for a whole week.

We’d be shocked if kids went into maths and weren’t taught or helped to improve or given homework to practise. We don’t give them sums then just shrug and criticise when they can’t do them. So why is it acceptable to do that in PE?

But what fundamentally made PE pointless for me was that nothing was ever actually taught.

When i was at (state) junior school (in the 70s) and (state then private) secondary school (70s and 80s) we spent a lot of time on technique, not much on tactics in PE/Sport lessons. So for eg if we had a double lesson and were to play netball, the first half hour would be practicing things being in pairs, one throws the ball, and you'd have to jump, catch it in the air, land on one leg then you can move the other leg so you can see who to pass to. Hockey would be dribbling between cones, or shooting at goal (poor me, goalie, useless at dribbling), for volleyball we'd practice doing 3 touches, so receive, set, smash type of thing.

And then the rest of the lesson would be a (usually short) match and trying to incorporate what we'd practiced.

Agree if sports lessons aren't doing that, they're not a lot of help.

Abusive shouting is one thing, but ‘come on, speed up etc’ is fine.
No it’s not fine. Most likely they CAN’T speed up. They’re not physically capable of speeding up. It’s not ok to tell pupils to do things that are beyond their ability.

And whose fault is it that these kids are so unfit?Always somebody else’s fault.
Its not the PE teacher’s place to criticise a pupil’s body or ability. It’s their place to assess the pupil’s ability and give them tasks that they are able to complete and which stretch them slightly. That’s how teaching works. Teachers don’t give everyone the same work - they differentiate based on ability. Except in PE.

When I was in secondary school there was a term (or half term or something like that, period of time anyway) when we could choose what we wanted to do for PE, I chose the weight training room with the cardio and weight training machines. Allowing some choice is good but of course first you need to expose the children to all the different choices before they can choose.

Don't live in the UK any more, I like how they do PE in school where I am now, for instance for the next 3 weeks my DD's class are doing orienteering so its not just physical exercise but mental as well, with map reading. Someone who might be less physically adept might shine when it comes to reading the map.

I always wondered why we had some equipment that seemed to never ever get used or maybe twice in the school time you was there.

primary they have the wall apparatus but I could count on one hand how many times we where allowed to use that. Same as the beaches and jump thing and the horse we used it once. What a waste and was great when we did actually get to use it.

secondary massive massive trampolines. Used for 5 lessons in the whole of my secondary experience yet we all had to do rugby, football, hockey what felt like continuously.

It’s their place to assess the pupil’s ability and give them tasks that they are able to complete and which stretch them slightly.

that doesn't match with

No it’s not fine. Most likely they CAN’T speed up. They’re not physically capable of speeding up

I get it. Some children are less able at sport than others and i have absolutely no truck with bullying PE teachers. But i also have absolutely zero time for people who insist that the slightest form of encouragement will destroy children's lives forever. In fact i would go further and say that some children absolutely need that and it helps them greatly. And sure parents know them best, but some parents (as we see on MN) sabotage their own children's development by simply saying "oh shame you can't do that - I'll do it for you/you don't have to do that".

People do sometimes need to stretch themselves, and as long as a teacher isn't bullying "come on fatty move faster" is not ok "keep going you're nearly there" is fine.

One word: Dodgeball.

Whenever outdoor sports were cancelled, we'd be piled into the hall to play Dodgeball. Kids who'd forgotten their kit miraculously begged to play, and since there's no particular skill, the unlikeliest of kids got cheered on by the whole year.

I can't remember the details, but there was a similar warm up exercise we played in drama which got everyone joyfully out of breath.

Or the fake world cup.

Or frankly, just allowing us to go to the gym. Half the class in a lesson, the other half swapped into the gym.

Basically anything where there's a degree of fun and choice.

I was sporty so loved competitive sport and was in the hockey and cross country teams but agree it would be good to have some non competitive stuff.

The issue for plenty of girls though and I have read it many times when a did you like PE at school thread has been on here was the amount of girls who didn’t like getting sweaty or messy. That never crossed my mind as a kid and did not bother me. But it’s obviously an issue. Many girls and many women worry too much about how people judge their looks, it’s bred from pure misogyny really.

I do remember lots of kids dodging showers. I only had a bath once a week, this was the 70’s so commonplace and I used to love them as we didn’t have a shower at home.

So whilst other options for non competitive sport sound like a brilliant idea I also think confidence for girls about their bodies and mainly not giving a shit about what others think of them would help them with sport and life overall.

Our school had showers but we were never allowed to use them because it would take too long, and then they’d need supervision and cleaning, etc. Five years of PE and not once was anyone allowed to shower. Very unhelpful! And like others my school had massive trampolines which only got used a couple of times a year, and ropes and wall bars that we were never allowed to use, not even once as far as I recall. Maybe the staff were too lazy to get them out?

Yelling “speed up” is not ok. The correct approach is to assess the child and say how fast can you run, what plan can we make to help you improve, and put actual actions in place. Not just yell “speed up” with no understanding of why they’re going so slow and no interventions put in place to actually help them speed up.

It is fine. Everyone can keep trying, and keep trying to move on How is telling someone to speed up criticising them, if they are moving at a snails pace.

You’re telling me that all kids try in events? 😂 My kids (two out of three) are elite athletes and they also get the ‘Come on John, do better’

This verbal exchange is not reserved for less able kids only.

People love to moan about nothing.

Ans who said anything about criticising bodies?! Where has that come into it.

I would say telling people to speed up Is stretching then, because nobody, nobody works as hard as they should in PE, most of the time.

And yes, they do differentiate in PE. Of course they do.

You won’t get first XV rugby players playing with the kids that can barely handle a ball. What would be the point. Better kids gets pissed off, worse off kids are at real risk of injury.

Unless of course my kids’ school is the only school that does this (seems unlikely).

@Quincythequince

Sounds just like my kids school. Mine go to an inner city state. This thread is out the ark and has undertones of PE lessons decades ago. I’m 34 and I clearly remember being able to choose what I would be participating in over the next term (girls football, gym, track etc).

My PE teacher was also very nice but she was firm when we were either just being lazy or taking the piss (yeah it happens…) Options were always presented to us in a fair way.

People literally do love to moan. Even my DD likes PE and she’s a natural sloth. For many kids it’s a break from being confined to a classroom all day.

The problem is that the PE teachers and curriculum leaders, and the national sports people campaigning for more competitive sport in schools were the sporty ones when they were at school and don't understand why others hate it so much. Lots of bad memories for me in the early eighties.

It is ok!
FFS.
People are so soft!

How often do they even do perimeter runs??!

Barely ever - it’s a non event.

All these people making excuses for their unfit kids when you are the reason they are like this. It’s the kids I feel sorry for with the expectation for them that there is no accountability or desire to improve.

And I am in no way mocking the kids for this, I feel bad for them that they’ve been allowed to get like this.

If your maths was shit, you’d try to make sure you improved wouldn’t you. Should be the same for your fitness too, but I bet people aren’t encouraging their kids to get better/fitter for homework.

Interventions put in place to help them speed up? 😂 Go for a jog, or a brisk walk, daily, in your own time.

If it wasn’t for school PE, what else would they be doing.