How could PE be improved in schools?

[chris1987]

I'm studying to be a PE teacher and would really like to know your thoughts on how PE could be improved :)

Consider sports that engage children mentally as well as physically and don’t rely on team competition.
Parkour, Climbing and martial arts have a strong ethos of safety and discipline as well as self-improvement and fitness

Dance. Yoga. Gardening. Cycling. Walking. Martial arts. Pilates. Ceilidhs. Tree planting. Orienteering. Silly sports day races like egg and spoon. Twister. Kick scooters. Hula hooping. Co-operative physical games.

Sets, so the ones who like competitive team sports can do them and the ones who don't /can't can have work properly differentiated for them.

Freezing cold in the winter playing hocky. Always in shorts, short sleeved shirt and thin cardigan if we were lucky. PE teacher had on thick track suit, scarves, hat, gloves! One we were playing hocky and the mist was so thick that when the ball was hit offside we couldn’t find it!!. Awful memories of PE at school.

An actual understanding of why children don't enjoy sort at school.
Ban unkind 'banter'.
An appreciation that not all boys are mad about football and to 'just try harder' won't change that.
Different sports, including the chance to do the ones that only the other sex is allowed to do (girls trampolining and table tennis, boys football and rugby).
Prioritise enjoyment of sport for all the children in a class over glory hunting external tournaments for the few.
An understanding of special educational needs.
Greater variety of individual sports and the chance for children to choose.
Praise for improvement not just being the best.
Move out of the 80s and drop the practice of the cool, best-at-sports-teachers-favourites choosing teams and leading activities for those small groups. If the teachers have little clue about inclusion, the super sporty wonderkids have next to zero.

Ask kids why they don't like PE

My 12yo has been entirely put off organised sport, despite being really active with boundless energy, by the teachers ethos towards school sports. We've had to do significant repair work on his self esteem and view of sport, finding the things that will raise his self belief and enjoy, mostly outdoor things that have nothing to do with ball skills.

It's just shit and none of us can wait till he can drop it.

I was struck by something someone said to me about a year ago, that the fittest/healthiest women they knew went to the gym to get fit/slim, whereas the fittest /healthiest men they knew had a sport hobby, and would go to the gym/train to be better at their sport, not for body size/health, that was a by product.

I don't think moving away from sport to exercise is good idea. But yes, it should be about having fun.

I think this is a brilliant thread - full of great suggestions. I so agree with putting more focus on fitness and non competitive sports. My son was so enthusiastic about PE at primary school but once he got to secondary and realised he wasn't good enough for the rugby, football or athletic teams he started saying he was rubbish, that he hated PE and didn't want to do it. It's such a shame. And the picking of teams from best to worst is downright cruel and shouldn't be allowed.

There is a knock on effect at University too. Where I work they are very big on inclusion with respect to fitness but my first university was very sports elitist - there were no team sports clubs in mainstream sports that catered to those who did want to do sports but weren't going to do inter university level.

More choice. More coaching and encouragement for those who struggle, less 'supervising'.

Recognise that team sports (e.g. netball) can create ideal breeding grounds for bullying. It is very physically obvious when a child struggles with PE and it makes them vulnerable in ways that don't compare in academic subjects.

I believe that part of physical education should be to build up fitness. I always thought I couldn't run... Turns out that as an adult, once I built up my fitness/stamina, I'm actually pretty good at it. We never 'built up' to cross country running at school and most of us ended up walking, which wouldn't have happened if some sort of fitness program had been followed.

Cross country was more about having a fag on the disused railway line when I was at school. Not a teacher in sight! More of a saunter for the unfit! No: I never did progress to running and I didn’t smoke. It did provide a a few minutes of peace though!

We do need to foster great sport in school for those who need it but we need to be far more creative about fitness for everyone.

One primary only offers rugby and football at ks1 for after school club. Which is incredibly sexist. By the end of ks1 there are no girls as they just cant keep up. It's not really better for ks2 either.
The focus needs to be on womens sport to make it as popular as men's. It's crazy women are sat watching men run around.
I would have liked to have dc do more sports clubs but they seem quite fixed in terms of time and it's not easy to make those specific times.
Kids shouldnt be starting secondary so overweight they cant run around. So probably more exercise at primary level. I think school sport is too competitive it would be nice if a much wider group could have a go in a team as playing the best and more is how you improve. I went through the whole of 2ndry with only being an unsubbed sub in rounders. The same kids in every sport every time.
Also the reason some kids may do better outside school is that some sports dont run sept-aug so the younger ones are the oldest at some things.
How many of us never picked ones are Summer birthdays?
However doing a club with toddler dd you can see that even at 3-4yo some kids are naturally better. (However others it is hard to tell as they are that year older)

PE at school massively failed me and many other girls I think. If you weren’t good at netball/football/anything involving hand/eye co-ordination, you were basically left to think you had no aptitude for sport. When we rarely had the opportunity to do athletics, they never included distance running - everything was about sprinting. It turns out, I’m a fairly good runner, a decent cyclist and a great swimmer; I’m also very strong and could probably do quite well at powerlifting, but it took me until my mid-20s to realise this. Or even to find out how much I enjoy exercising!

School PE should expose kids to a variety of different activities with emphasis on personal enjoyment and being intrinsically motivated; not just team sports!

same as most of the others; variety, more options. appropriate clothing but not rigid requirements. options to progress to referee levels, possibly coaching levels.

Everyone loves a game of rounders. Just a thought.

No they don't fiery.

Everyone loves a game of rounders. Just a thought.

A good example of how NOT to think. Rounders is great if you can run, hit the ball hard and catch well, if you can't it's an unpleasant experience for a child who's team groan every time they miss the ball. Avoid these sweeping generalisations that "everybody loves" a certain game.

Another one who still shudders at the memory of PE team selection.

Too slow for hockey, too short for netball and field & track in the summer term was just horrendous. Spent too much time standing around (often in cold wet weather) watching the sporty kids do their thing.Yet I loved the country dancing taught of our old fashioned PE teacher and really enjoyed Judo and played badminton 3 times a week outside of school. If you had told my PE teachers I would end up making a living from teaching a sport, they wouldn't have believed you on the evidence of my school based PE. Well actually they probably would have asked who you were talking about......

I would like to see PE focus to enabling a life long participation in an active life style; simple changes could help so rather than the hated cross country run, why not just a brisk walk. Instead of team sports, why not dancing, eg - country dancing, ballroom, line dancing.

I also think we should be incorporating 30-40 mins of PE / Activity every day; - so you need activities that don't need special kit / changing clothes - get kids walking and dancing!
So many generations of children end up hating sport and yet it's still taught in the same way.

Variety of sport.

My kids secondary school does a huge variety - each for about 3 weeks so if a child isn't enjuoyign it, its not for very long. They also try and time it so they do certain sports right before the season stars so kids can have a go and then sign up for a school team if they like it.

Sports this year have included rugby, gymnastics, swimming, tennis, volleyball, hockey, martial arts, cheerleading. They also do the beep test each year twice so they can measure their individual improvement.

At primary they do a lot of games that involve running around so kids are getting fit without realising it. eg spies and generals. The teacher chooses the teams for any team sports each and every time.

None of my kids hate PE in general although there are always activities that they don't particularly like. But equally there are always activities that they look forward to. In high school they are given the roster for the year so they know what is coming up.

Ditching it altogether or making it optional.

Seriously, hope your generation will be the one to find a way not to let people like me scarred for life by the subsequent bullying

Ditching it altogether or making it optional.

Obesity and the associated health issues are rising, with the increase of technology our day to day lives are becoming more and more sedentary, mental health problems are increasingly common... Making PE optional is simply not ethical.

The word "seriously" at the beginning of the second paragraph shouls strongly suggest the first one wasn't serious.

The second one was serious instead. This thread shows how so many overweight adults are unfit after being put off exercise in schools. Ditching PE might be not right, but it needs a serious reconsidering.

I'd like to see PE become a less confusing and frustrating subject than it was when I did it.

I was never the fittest kid, but middling rather than struggling. But PE to me was an endless stream of futile running about. We learned the rules of netball, hockey, rugby, football, tennis etc through endless playing and getting it wrong. It would have been more interesting to me if someone had explained the rules, how to play well tactically, made competitive games a bit more tactically/strategically competitive rather than sort of thrash it out not knowing why one team is doing better until we can all go for a hideous shower.

By about Year 9 PE got a bit more interesting, when we started making it a bit more cognitive - learning about fitness and healthy exercise. A bit more of the "why" we should do PE rather than yelling at us to change into stupid clothes and do something unenjoyable for an hour before a gritty shower. By then my hatred of PE had set in though.

So, for me;

treat it a bit more like a normal subject. Actually TEACH things, rather than just forcing physical exercise.

Don't shy away from a classroom PE lesson or see PE as the primary way to tackle obesity. (Use things like the golden mile/walk to school etc that)

Don't force kids to shower at school if they don't want to. Not having a shower for a few hours isn't going to kill anyone, whereas being naked in front of 20 peers is actually quite miserable.

Stop outsourcing primary school PE to external "coaches". It makes PE into a subject that's too different for the teachers to teach. The normal primary school teachers cover everything from religion to how poo is made to how to read and add up, yet somehow PE is beyond them? Gives a strange message.

My DD loved PE until it became running test after running test and giant blue knickers. Important to make it fun and variety of sports plus a reasonable outfit not tiny PE skirts or giant knickers.

I am a hugely physically active adult IN SPITE of PE. I walk 12000 steps plus most days, and get to the gym 3 days a weekit would be more, but I have small children and a job, and no family support. I used to spend 10 hours a week at the gym, and I wish I still could. I did the couch to 5k 8 years agountil then I believed I couldn't run (I'm hypermobile and probably have mild asthma). I did it again as a way to ease back into fitness after each of my caesarians.

If an app can teach me to run, why the fuck couldn't any teacher? If a gym can teach me to love being strong, why couldn't I get strong in PE? If I can laugh with a bunch of women every week at a dance class, why couldn't I ever laugh in PE? It's all down to shit "teaching" (or indeed the absence of any real teaching at all). Emphasize fun over anything, and make sure everyone is having fun. Bench anyone who acts like an arsehole. Ideally, boys and girls should be separated from puberty (and I say this as a staunch believer in co-ed for everything else)--I never had fun in PE in high school until I did it in Finland, where we were separated.

Be nice to kids. Dont yell its not cold when we can see our breath and you are wearing a duvet.

But KonaMum, PE hasn't helped many of us, it's made us less active if anything because of unpleasant memories.

Another piece of advice, though not limited to PE teachers. Provide proper supervision during sports day. I remember it being more like Lord of The Flies day.