Schools Must Have Physical Fitness Monitoring For Children, Health Survey Recommends

Health campaigners recommend that schools should assess its students’ physical fitness levels and abilities in Math and English. According to the health campaign group ukactive, U.K. is facing a lot of health problems because of lack of exercise.

Extra physical fitness monitoring from schools should encourage children to participate in physical activities more, according to the group. According to BBC News, the government said it raised the funding for PE and primary schools will be expected to offer the class for two hours per week.

The group warned that the country is dealing with a “ticking time bomb” of illnesses due to less amount of time spent on exercise. The report from the group entitled “Generation Inactive” showed that only half of seven-year-old kids meet the guidelines of being physically active for an hour per day.

More specifically, the report states that only 50% of children from primary schools and two-thirds from secondary schools have good understanding on how important food, exercises and proper nutrition are when observing a healthy lifestyle.

Researchers also explained that body mass index, or BMI, alone will not define a child’s state of health. The report notes that there are children who may be slim but are still unhealthy.

According to the Belfast Telegraph, the current requirement for England schools is to offer two hours of PE classes a week for students aged five to 16. However, the survey report said that there are still many who cannot achieve that.

The report put emphasis on the important of health and physical fitness and that they should be experienced as fun and engaging activities. Researchers believe that physical activities should be part of the entire school day.

"The current national ambition focused solely around PE lessons is simply not bold enough," said ukactive chair Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, in a report from BBC. "We should aim higher and demand more.”

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