What is really happening to our Primary School children's levels of fitness?
A recent Bristol University Study, funded by The British Heart Foundation, has sent shockwaves through schools across Britain. The study monitored over 2000 children over a period of 7 years and the results are alarming!
Between the ages of 6 and 11, children became 17 minutes less active A WEEK with every year with year 6 children only achieving 41% of the recommended moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) recommended by the UKI’s chief medical officers.
It’s big news, with the BBC News and other high profile tabloids covering this topic and similar stories of obesity in our primary school children with headlines like..
NO SALAD DAYS Nearly 40% of kids when they leave primary school by 2024 will be overweight or obese damning report claims The Sun.
This isn’t ‘new’ news though. As far back as 2016 the press were covering child obesity stories like The Telegraph who highlighted the fact that British children were among the least active in the world with exercise ‘stripped’ out of modern lives.
So what are we doing about it?
The government are attempting to tackle this growing problem with a 2019/2020 spending commitment of £320m which is allocated to primary schools through a Primary PE and Sports Premium Funding Programme.
The real truth here though, is that Primary Schools up and down the country are still struggling with their physical education programme, even with the new injection of cash from the government.
There are five key indicators that the government has outlined the Primary PE and Sport Premium money should be spent on. These include:
The above five key elements all look very positive from a government statistic point of view of course. Unfortunately, they have not addressed HOW they are going to deliver these 5 key elements.
We’ve highlighted below the gaps and issues which will prevent our primary school children becoming more active through just a funding exercise:
What can the government do to tackle these 3 major issues? It is about finance of course, but it is also about understanding what is actually going on in primary schools up and down the country.
Giving them better tools to teach with and taking some of the burden away from our wonderful primary school teachers.
Of course the answer is SPR Juniors....
The SPR Juniors Programme
SPR Juniors Programme is a highly active P.E lesson resource pack containing video and lesson plan resources that allow staff to deliver high quality Physical Education at the push of a button.
The programme for SPR Juniors is designed to offer each primary school a balanced education programme focusing on nutrition, fitness and mindset delivering Strong Powerful Resilient Juniors!
Primarily, the programme provides progressive P.E. lessons for years 3 to 6 which help children improve their core fitness and develop motor skills that will underpin their sporting performance.
Each school will also have access to our SPR Junior Resource Centre. This is an online library for teachers to access nutritional guidance to support their curriculum plus it includes fun goals and milestones for pupils to reach that will support their nutritional awareness.
These resources are designed to be used as part of the weekly parent newsletter. They help parents understand, in more depth, what their children are learning in relation to nutrition and fitness and give them the core information on how to encourage their children to continue their SPR Junior’s programme at home!
