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23 June 2009
Reduced PE blamed for Child Obesity
A drop in physical education all over the country is one of the reasons for the high rise in obesity among children.
The government prescribes at least 30 minutes of physical activity, five days a week or 60 minutes of moderate level activity a day. But few schools incorporate this in their timetables.
According to Mark Mulcahy, Director of Rugby Acorns, Oakmedians RFC, schools have drastically cut down physical education. “Unfortunately some schools compromise on this crucial time for exercise and replace it with time for extra IT or arts. The kids hardly go out and kick about a football. It’s because they don’t know how. And that is for the schools to look into. Its part of PE,” he says.
However, 70% of children got their moderate level of activity. But that too is steadily decreasing with more schools giving importance to classroom activity and sidelining physical education.
Yvonne Gritschneder, Policy Officer at the British Heart Foundation, “We need to get children across the country being far more active, either through school based sport, or unstructured play. We must tackle the obesity epidemic or we’ll be faced with a future generation of adults at greater risk of heart disease.”